CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance
by Manajerkop
Summary: What happens when innocent bystanders get fed up with enduring the fallout from Sonichu's zappin' adventures? REVOLUTION, that's what! Experience Sonichu from a whole new perspective, as the PVCC fights to end the tyranny of Christian Weston Chandler.
1. Prologue

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Prologue**

**Outgoing Message Intercept (Jerk class) – File PVCC11207**

**True and original content has been altered to comply with Mayor Chandler's request.**

_Dear Tanya,_

_I'm sorry to sound rushed, but we're running low on time and M-C's goons have been trying to track us ever since we hit _**(DATA EXPUNGED)** _last week. I know what you're thinking, and yes, that was us. Chandler can't keep this hellhole completely locked down. Don't believe any so-called "news" that comes out of there – NOTHING is the way they make it sound. CWCville's been placed under martial law. We've heard rumors of reprogramming facilities going up all over the place, and now they've started taking people right off the streets. We can't go anywhere without seeing TRUE and HONEST propaganda plastered all over the damn place…it makes me sick to know there's innocents dying because of this madman. Worst of all, the chus are breeding. More and more ferals are being sighted around the city outskirts…and they're nowhere near as adorable as Chandler would have you believe. We lost all contact with Ricky two days ago. Jake found the body this morning on patrol – he'd been _**(DATA EXPUNGED)**_. I had no idea they could even do that with those little arm-stubs. On the bright side, we're starting to hunt them for food now that the Mall's been sealed off. As long as we kill them before they evolve, we can outlast the other chus and Chandler's mercenaries._

_We've started the attacks again now that Walsh is back – but it's been next to impossible to take out any high value targets without collateral damage. It's bad enough that Chandler sees his own citizens as expendable, but now I think they're catching on to us. Everywhere we turn, there's a dozen meat shields clustered around every ChaoCom target, and the park's more packed than ever. They're doing this on purpose. They know we're recruiting…if we accidentally killed a bunch of citizens…_

_I just want to let you and Mom know I'm okay, and that I'm coming home as soon as this is over. We can't leave now – not until the world knows the truth about this place._

_I love you, sis._

_- Steve_

_P.S. Make sure Cash reads this letter – he needs to know the PVCC's still in this fight._

* * *

**Author's Note: **If you're the type of person who is easily disgusted by excessive violence, profanity, or sexual content…then you've probably never even heard of Sonichu or Christian Weston Chandler. Regardless, this story's going to get pretty intense in its later chapters, so tread carefully. Revolution is coming to CWCville.


	2. Chapter 0: First Contact

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

All CWCollateral Material is Copyrighted

May, 2012 - ? by.

Manajerkop.

*Any names, or persons, mentioned

in this story's content, except

that of Christian Weston Chandler,

that may seem similar

to anyone

in real life, are purely coincidental,

or otherwise parodic.*

* * *

**Chapter 0: First Contact**

**Extract from Kevin Shaw's Journal**

_No matter how many years go by, everyone I've ever talked to always remembers exactly what they were doing when they first heard the news. It's one of those little things in life that you can never fully explain…an event so massive and unbelievable that it sears itself permanently into your subconscious for the rest of your life. Even when your brain cells start to wither and you can't remember what year it is, you'll never, never lose those memories. _

_I was eighteen, fresh out of high school with a near-straight-A report card, a clean record, and a special place on the honor roll, yet I didn't have that much to look forward to in the not-too-distant future. I was your typical slacker – all play and no work, not even a part-time job at the local McDonalds or Chick-fil-A. It's not like I didn't apply to any colleges…I just didn't see the point of school or work when I could pursue my lifelong ambition._

_Basically, I wanted to be the very best…like no one ever was. A Pokémon trainer. You don't need some fancy degree in Applied Science or a CADD certificate to toss a ball or duel with other people…all you need is some basic animal magnetism, a backpack, and one hell of a good throwing arm. A few elementary friends couldn't hurt either._

_During high school, I opted for all the necessary classes – biology, animal care, varsity baseball, etc. I wasn't exactly what you'd call Mr. Popularity, but I kept a close circle of friends and even dated a few girls from time to time. Quite a few kids left school early to embark upon their own Pokémon journeys, but I'm not the kind of person who rushes right into a situation without being prepared. So I did my homework, read my books, and studied like a good boy. Once I graduated, it looked as though I finally had the chance to break free and get out of this deadbeat little town._

_I was in the living room, discussing my future with my father, when chaos struck Station Square._

**June 1998, 54 mies from the city of Station Square**

"You're not a kid anymore, Kevin, and you've got to learn that life sometimes doesn't work out the way you want it to." Jack Shaw leaned forward in his chair, his face grave as he spoke to his son. "I don't want you risking your future on some ridiculous…'pokeymans adventure.' Jesus, when I was your age, kids went out and actually did things to _help_ people. They didn't run around all day making innocent animals fight to the death!"

"It's more than that, Dad," Kevin replied coldly. If his father meant to belittle or intimidate him with this conversation, it wasn't working at all. "For one thing, Pokémon don't fight to the _death_. Don't you know anything about what it means to be a..."

"I've heard enough about your barbaric little hobby to know that I don't want you having any more to do with it," Jack cut in abruptly. "Look at you! You did so well in school, yet you haven't even lifted a finger to help your community. And don't," he continued, raising his hand as Kevin opened his mouth to protest, "even start with me about that League bullshit you pulled sophomore year. Helping kids play a goddamn card game…that's not community service, _that's a goddamn card game_. When have you _ever_ actually applied yourself to something that could help your future? I've read your so-called 'college applications.' You've been trying to undermine me from the very beginning."

"You think I _want_ to go to some stuck-up, pretentious rich-kid school so I can spend my life designing buildings or some other wussy job? I'm eighteen, Dad! Kel has a house now, she already applied to the Trainer's College, she owns a fucking _Dragonite_, and, oh yeah,_ she's fucking twelve!_"

"Don't use that tone or that word with me, Kevin," snapped Jack. "You're my son, and I just want you to get out and _do_ something with your life. Just…listen to me for once. You aren't your cousin. I don't approve of what Ed and Laurie did…allowing their daughter out on her own at her age…" He shook his head in disappointment. "What am I supposed to do, just smile and wave as I watch you walk out on us…on your future?"

"It's my future. I'll do what I want with it."

Jack sighed. "Jesus Christ, and here I thought _Nate_ was the stubborn one. Look at him…he went through college and ended up with a great job. He's a robotics engineer! You're talking about a career…raising animals to fight one another."

"What Nate does is his own business," retorted Kevin. He resented the way Jack was always comparing him to Nate, as if his brother had caught Arceus itself. "What I do is mine. If he wants to work for Robotnik, well, _good for him_. Dad, just _leave me alone_. I already bought a ticket for the Pallet bus."

"It's not just _your_ business! Your mother and I have invested so much in your…what do you mean you already bought a ticket?"

"There's an orientation bus leaving two days from now. Every trainer starts in Pallet. Come on, you know Oak's got a good reputation. I'll be fine. I'll write to you and Mom every week."

The expression on Jack's face twisted chaotically, finally ending up somewhere between shock, anger, and bitter disappointment. For an instant, Kevin felt a sudden urge to apologize, to tell his father that everything had just been a big joke, to assure him that he was, in fact, going to visit Celadon City next week to try to find a good, well-paying job. But in his heart, he knew what he wanted to do with his life. To be the very best.

_Like no one ever was…_

Jack stood up. "Then you're on your own. I can't believe that any kid of mine could ever be so goddamn selfish. After all I've sacrificed to help you get a life, you're just spitting in my face."

"Dad…"

"Just pack your things and go. You're right, what you choose to do with your life is none of my business…or your mother's. That doesn't mean we have to do anything to help you ruin it."

"FINE!" shouted Kevin. His voice shook with helpless anger. "It's my real test, it's my cause, it's my life, and I don't need you interfering! You always loved Nate more than me…well, I'm sorry I couldn't _be_ him! Isn't that what you always wanted?"

His father took a step forward, his eyes wide with astonishment. "You-"

_RING! RING!_

"I'll get it. Don't you even _think_ about leaving now," Jack growled as he turned and grabbed the phone from the table next to the sofa. "Hello, this is Jack Shaw."

Kevin never heard the voice speaking on the other end of the line, but he didn't need to. In less than five seconds, the color of Jack's face had shifted from an angry red to a pale milk-white.

"W-when? When did it happen?" stammered Jack. The phone shook in his hand as he collapsed back into the chair. "Wait, what? It's still…" He sat bolt upright. "KEVIN, TURN ON THE TV! IRENE, LUCY, GET IN HERE!"

Startled at the terror in his father's voice, Kevin grappled for the remote and finally managed to switch on the television. It had to be the news network – something big was going down. A pulse thundered in his throat and chest. Tense with apprehension, he quickly flicked through the channels, passing a scene from _Mary Poppins_ and another from some stupid '80s cartoon about patriotic rabbits before…

His mother and fifteen-year-old sister, both confused and alarmed, bolted into the living room.

"Jack, what's happening? Is everything all…"

Jack motioned for Irene to sit down and watch the screen. The news channel was up now, and a news anchor was busy reading something from a sheet of paper. Kevin turned up the volume while Lucy and their mother sat down on the sofa beside him, still not entirely sure what was going on.

_BREAKING NEWS: STATION SQUARE FLOODED, BESIEGED BY "PERFECT CHAOS"_

"…_and the footage we've been getting from our on-site news teams has been absolutely amazing," _said the anchorman, glancing up at the camera._ "What appeared at first to be a high-pressure explosion - indeed, a tidal wave - from out of the city's sewer system has now transformed itself into a moving, apparently living creature that experts are calling the 'Perfect Chaos monster'…I'm not even sure how I can describe this…some sort of colossal water monster that is currently wreaking havoc in downtown Station Square. Initial reports estimate civilian casualties at somewhere between five hundred thousand and one point five million…and that's an optimistic guess, of course. A joint effort from the S.S.P.D. and the military has been dispatched to evacuate…"_

"My God…" gasped Irene, clutching her husband's hand in panic. "Jack, do you think Nate could have…"

"Shut up!" Jack's eyes were glued to the images on the screen. "Shut up Irene, don't even _say_ that! Kevin, Lucy, I want you two to go to your rooms and-"

"NO!" both siblings shouted simultaneously. For once, their father didn't even attempt to enforce his command.

"…_especially in the wake of the rocket attack by an unknown terrorist cell. Whatever set off this incident, it looks as though the military has been unable to stop this beast, even though we have multiple reports of air-to-surface missile strikes coming in from the teams in the field. Hold on…we're now going live to Lisa Jansen in Station Square. Viewers be advised – this footage is coming to you live and uncensored, directly from the disaster area. Go ahead, Lisa."_

The newsroom disappeared, replaced instead by what looked like a scene from a war movie. The once-magnificent skyline of Station Square had been torn to ruins. Black smoke columns billowed skyward in the distance, mingling with the tiny black dots of dozens of helicopters taking off and landing throughout the city. Lisa Jansen, a young, very frightened-looking reporter, was standing beside a rooftop helipad with a microphone in her hand and headphones over her ears. Her makeup was smeared with blood from a scratch just above her eye, and two of her painted nails had been chipped. She glanced back and forth, waiting for her cue, then began to speak.

"_I'm here, on top of what used to be one of Station Square's finest hotels. As you can see behind me, the city is in a state of utter destruction. I've tried to get a report from the officers coordinating the rooftop evacuations, but they won't say how many people are dead or injured down there. From up here, I can…I can see bodies floating in the streets below…oh, God, there's thousands of them."_ Lisa choked and turned away, holding a hand across her eyes. It looked as though she was fighting back tears. In the distance, a monstrous roar rang out across the fallen city, followed by a dozen faint explosions. _"Those sounds you're hearing…those are jets attacking the monster – they're trying to push it back…buy everyone enough time to get out of here. Right now we've got two helicopters on the roof…they're taking people to safety as fast as they can, but there are literally thousands of survivors packed into this building alone. We'll be on the next flight to the military's FOB, or forward operating base near the city outskirts. Reporting live from Station Square, this is Lisa Jansen." _She looked up at her cameraman. _"GO! Cut away, for God's sake! Go put that on the-"_

The news anchor's expression of disbelief mirrored the look on every face of the Shaw family. He took a deep breath, straightened his tie, and continued.

"_Thank you, Lisa. We've just received an urgent call from someone, a Mr. Mike Carter, who tells us he is very close to the creature now, and can describe it. Mike, this is Dan Stevens. You're on. Can you tell us where you are?"_

"_Hello! Yes, I hear you!"_ a terrified voice, heavy with distortion, replied.

"_Mike, where…where are you right now?"_

"_I'm in my apartment, on the twenty-first floor, and I'm looking right at this thing! Oh God, it's right next to the window, it just tore through an apartment on the other side of the street! There's people trapped in there, they're all-"_

"_Uh, Mike, you say you can see the monster…this 'Perfect Chaos'…clearly? Can you describe what it looks like?"_

"_I don't care what it's called, it's big, it looks like some kind of dragon or dinosaur…or no, it looks like an Onyx fused with a Tentacruel and grew to the size of a fucking skyscraper! It's made of WATER! They're throwing everything they have at it and NOTHING'S WORKING!"_

"_Mike, I need you to calm down. Take a deep breath. How many people are in the room with you?"_

"_It's just me in here…I just came home from work – we got let off early 'cause of the rocket attack – and I'm taking the elevator up when the whole building starts shaking like an earthquake just hit! Next thing I know I run to the window and see this huge wave sweeping across the city, and then this thing just explodes out of a building ten blocks away and starts leveling the place! You gotta send help…tell them I'm in here or something…JESUS!" _A deafening _whoosh_ - the roar of a passing jet - interrupted Mike's voice. Another explosion, louder this time, resonated just outside the building. _"They hit it again – two jets just put about four missiles each into the thing's face and it's not even scratched! There are people down in the flooded street…looks like soldiers…firing up at it. I can see rockets flying and…OH GOD! Jesus Christ, it just wiped out the entire street! There's people falling from the building over there, it's crumbling down and…"_

The phone call cut out suddenly. Perhaps Mike had been killed, perhaps the phone line had been cut, or perhaps the news network had decided to pull the plug before things got too disturbing. Dan Stevens didn't wear an expression of shock anymore…only a grim frown that seemed to age his photogenic face by a good twenty years. Kevin had seen him on TV before, reporting from Pokémon tournaments and other minor news stories. This was Stevens' first time covering something on this scale.

"_Ladies and gentlemen,"_ he spoke softly, adjusting his glasses. _"What you've just seen and heard is happening at this very moment, all across what was once Station Square. The mayor has been safely evacuated, and just recently declared a citywide state of emergency. We have reports that he has been coordinating with the military to establish a rapid and large-scale bombing operation…"_

"_STREET SHOT! WALTERS! CUT TO WALTERS!"_ someone yelled. Stevens looked around in confusion, but the camera cut away before he could speak. Gary Walters, another reporter, looked as though he had run ten miles through a war zone…though given the circumstances, he might have been doing just that.

"_This is Gary Walters reporting live from the streets of Station Square. Behind us, the being known as Perfect Chaos is…no, don't look at me! Get the shot! GET THE SHOT!"_ The camera edged to the right, away from Walters. In the street, a colossal liquid creature resembling a dragon with tentacles loomed overhead, roaring furiously as it crashed through another building. _"We've been making our way through the flooded street to the nearest evacuation point…and now it looks like we found the monster itself. It just took out an entire platoon of soldiers a block away, and now it's…WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?"_

Kevin and his family couldn't believe what they were seeing. Something…a shining, golden blur with red streaks underneath had just shot down the street toward the Perfect Chaos monster. Water splashed across the screen, and Walters' cameraman cursed as he tried to wipe off the lens. When the camera refocused, the gold blur seemed to be flying, circling the watery beast and zigzagging to dodge its attacks. Multicolored fireballs and swirling miniature tornadoes spewed forth from the beast and impacted against the surrounding buildings, but to no avail. The newcomer remained airborne.

"_Are you getting this?"_ Walters asked incredulously. _"Please tell me you're getting this. Uh, Dan, the situation's changed. Something's attacking the creature now…it looks like a yellow or gold ball of light, or energy of some sort, and it's giving Perfect Chaos the fight of his life." _He waved furiously at what must have been a band of onlookers who were trying to watch the duel._ "Get back, GET BACK! The gold thing just took a hit, it looks like it's falling back this way toward…is that a Pika-"_

As the camera zoomed in down the street and focused on a tiny yellow and brown creature sitting on what had once been part of a bridge, a surge of blinding white light exploded across the screen. The gold blur had struck the Pikachu at full force, presumably annihilating it before it knew it was dead. Lucy let out a sob – Pikachus were one of her favorite species of Pokémon, and she always hated seeing animals killed, even by each other in nature shows. Kevin reached over and hugged her gently, but his eyes never left the television. There was no way he could ever believe what he was seeing and hearing was real. He half expected a title screen with "COMING SOON TO THEATERS" to pop up…as if this whole incident had been faked in a clever marketing campaign for some new disaster movie. _Godzilla_ - the one with Matthew Broderick - had just hit theaters last month, and maybe some rival studio was now trying to outdo Roland Emmerich. But no, if this was a movie trailer, it was the longest, bloodiest, and most horrific one he'd ever seen.

The light had faded, leaving a faint glow and a massive, beautiful rainbow in its place. Gary Walters was furiously rubbing his eyes, swearing under his breath as he tried to get his act together. Dangerous though the situation might have been, he was still a reporter, and so far he was doing a damn fine job.

"_Dan, I don't know if you got all that, but we just got blinded by an explosion of white light – the gold thing smashed right into a wild boy Pikachu…I mean, a feral male Pikachu that must have wandered into the city…and exploded. What we're seeing now is a huge, and I mean, HUGE rainbow…looks like it's stretching about fifteen miles away…what is that? Get that! Get that!"_ The camera panned over to a red and white-striped building on the other side of the street, showing a second blur – yellow this time – racing along the side of the skyscraper with no regard for gravity. The newcomer sped up and leapt, arcing toward the Perfect Chaos monster like a bolt of electricity. Meanwhile, the true and original blur continued its assault, unaware of its newfound ally.

As the yellow blur sparked in midair, the beast let out a thunderous bellow and lunged forward to meet this new foe.

It almost sounded…_afraid_.

_BOOM!_ Three jagged forks of lightning stabbed down into the head of Perfect Chaos, just as the golden blur smashed into its chest. Roaring and shrieking in agony, the monster reeled backward. Electric current coursed across its watery skin, lashing and crackling and spearing deeper and deeper, until the dragonish being could hold its form no longer. With a final cry, it collapsed inward, falling apart in a spray of steam and light. There wasn't even anything left to hit the ground.

In the silence, Walters took a tentative step forward into the streets, ignoring the sea of corpses that surrounded him and his cameraman. He was past the point where his job mattered anymore – all he seemed to want was to get a glimpse of the thing that had just saved Station Square.

Fifty feet away, kneeling in the center of a crater, was a blue hedgehog-like creature wearing no more than a pair of red running shoes. People…groups of survivors…were beginning to gather around their savior. A faint sound emanated from the massing crowd, something like a chant or a prayer.

"_Come on,"_ Walters said, nodding toward the crater. As the two men approached and slid down the side carefully, the hedgegog stood upright and dusted itself off. Though clearly exhausted from the battle, it nevertheless flashed the reporter a satisfied grin as it stepped forward.

Walters had only one question. _"Who…who are you?"_

The creature smiled again. _"I'm Sonic. Sonic the Hedgehog!"_

The crowd exploded into cheers. People were screaming, crying, shouting their thanks to the skies as they clustered around their hero – and at last, Kevin realized what they had been chanting.

"_SONIC! SONIC! SONIC! YAY!"_

**June 1998, two days after the attack on Station Square**

Kevin pushed his last suitcase into the Pallet bus, wiping the sweat from his forehead as the hot sun beat down on him. Packing had been hard enough considering the circumstances, but at long last, all of his worldly possessions now resided in a storage compartment beneath the bus.

It felt strange to be leaving home so soon after the mayhem and chaos of the Station Square attack, but it also felt _right_. A new chapter of his life was beginning now – a chapter he himself could write without having to worry about his parents editing anything out. The world was his to explore, and with enough luck and skill, he might just become a gym leader, or even a master worthy of the Elite Four. But for now, he was just a would-be trainer, off to get his first Pokémon from Professor Oak in Pallet Town.

His family, even his father, had come to see him off. Irene had packed him a bag lunch for the bus ride, the way she'd used to pack his school lunches when he was little. Lucy gave him a little trinket she had made with the clay she was always using in her pottery class – a medallion with a Pikachu's face. Kevin knew he would never wear it in public, but he kept in nonetheless. He would always remember her while he was out on his Pokémon journey, every time he opened his backpack and saw it hanging inside on its beaded string.

"Well…goodbye, Lu," he mumbled, a little embarrassed. He'd never been particularly good at saying goodbye, but luckily, his sister knew exactly what to do.

"Write to us as much as you can!" she yelled, and hugged him so tight that he thought his ribcage was going to collapse in on itself. "If you catch a Pikachu, send me a picture!"

Kevin halfheartedly freed himself. "You know I will, Lu. Mom, thanks for the lunch. Tell Nate I said hi."

"Of course," replied Irene, hugging him as well. "You be careful. Promise?"

"Promise. True and honest."

Kevin turned to his father last. He'd been dreading this moment for days now. They hadn't spoken about his decision since the day of the attack, and now he didn't know what Jack had in store for him. No matter what, he was set on starting the journey, and nothing was going to stop him now.

"Goodbye, Dad," he said. "Thanks for everything."

"Go, son." Jack extended a hand, pointed to the bus, then offered it to Kevin. "Go out and…catch 'em all."

"I will," Kevin laughed, accepting Jack's handshake with a smile. "Thank you, father."

The bus slowly shrank into the distance, trailing exhaust as it rumbled down the road to Pallet. The Shaws watched it leave until it was nothing more than a speck on the horizon, then turned to go back inside.

"I'm going to miss him," sighed Irene. Jack wrapped an arm around her shoulders and squeezed her gently.

"Don't worry," said Lucy with a grin. "He'll be all right. You'll see. He's gonna be the very best."

Jack ruffled his daughter's hair. "I know he will, Lu. Like no one ever was."


	3. Chapter 1: Detourism

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 1: Detourism**

**June 1998, Viridian Forest, Pallet bus**

Kevin leaned back against his seat, shifting uncomfortably as he tried to find a better position to nap in. So far, nothing was working. The bus was slow enough already, but with the Station Square/CWCville highway backed up as far as the eye could see, the driver had wisely taken the first available detour – a choice that was now taking them through the heart of Viridian Forest and over seemingly endless miles of unpaved, bumpy road. Even if he somehow managed to get to sleep, he had no idea how long the drive would take. They'd be lucky to reach Pallet by nightfall.

It wasn't the delay that worried Kevin…it was what might happen to them if they ran into trouble along the way. Even if they'd taken the highway, the bus would still have to pass through a notorious stretch of Team Rocket-controlled territory to get there. By day the roads were usually well-protected, but once the sun went down, even the patrols couldn't protect all of the traffic from nighttime ambushes…or worse. The trainer bus carried a light security team armed with pistols and Machokes as a way of protecting the children if need be. Against an attack by Team Rocket mercenaries, though, the best thing they could do was pray the tires held…and that the attackers hadn't brought Electrodes or RPGs.

Kevin was no stranger to the rumors. Even though attacks seemed to be slacking off over the past few months, Giovanni continued to reign supreme over the Team Rocket terrorist organization. As long as he held power, every mercenary, thief, kidnapper, and murderer under his command had someone to give them hope: a commander, a father figure, and an icon, all at once. Now it seemed that Giovanni's son Naitsirhc was poised to inherit the empire his father had forged from the blood of a thousand innocent Pokémon trainers. He'd been groomed from birth to hate the free world, to become a formidable duelist and soldier, and to follow both his father's commands and philosophy to the letter. Even at fourteen, he was already garnering a fearsome reputation as the bane of Pallet Town and the CWCville area.

Of course, the people who spread those rumors also swore that Naitsirhc owned both a Zapdos and a Raikou, so it was important not to get _too_ worked up about Team Rocket. At the same time, though, no one with any amount of common sense would ever underestimate what the organization was capable of.

Kevin certainly didn't.

There were about twenty-four other prospective trainers in the bus, a fairly equal mix of boys and girls all ranging from twelve to eighteen years old. Kevin felt a bit out of place, but then again, he knew he had the advantages of both education and size. He could probably hold his own against the majority of these kids if they all had to fight to the death, but he seriously doubted that was ever going to happen…

"Hey!" Someone tapped him on the shoulder abruptly. Snapping out of his deathmatch-related thoughts, Kevin sat bolt upright and turned to see a boy and a girl leaning over the seat behind him.

"What do you want?" he grunted sleepily.

"Just wanted to say hi," said the girl, and nodded to the boy beside her. "I'm Julie. That's my brother Max."

"Hi," said Max, flashing a grin at Kevin. Something didn't seem quite right about this kid…maybe it was his eyes or the far-too-innocent smile.

"I'm Kevin. Are you twins?"

"Nah. I'm fifteen and he's thirteen. I bet you couldn't tell us apart if we had the same clothes and hair, though. Do the voice, Max."

Max cleared his throat and began to speak in a ridiculous "girly" voice, which was really just a higher, softer version of his own._ "Hi, my name's Julie! I like to wear pretty dresses and go shopping and ride ponies and…"_

"I do _not_! Shut up, you little troll!" laughed Julie, and punched her brother in the arm.

"That…doesn't sound one bit like you," Kevin chuckled. He had to admit it – Max and Julie _did _look extremely similar…almost identical, in fact. The falsetto voice needed work though…only an idiot wouldn't be able to tell that Max wasn't, in fact, a girl.

"So where are you going?" Julie asked.

Kevin blinked confusedly. "Isn't everyone on the bus for…you know, Pokémon journeys?"

"I think so," Max explained. "_We're_ not. We're on vacation."

"We're from _Molvania_," said Julie, with an emphasis on the last word.

Kevin didn't even bother asking where this Molvania place was in relation to Kanto. The geographic state of the world seemed to be constantly changing with each passing year, and frankly, he couldn't be bothered to keep up with the times. Wherever these children were from, they seemed all right, if a little annoying. Max, though…Kevin still didn't trust the kid. He was hiding something.

The siblings quickly forgot about their new friend and began chattering back and forth about the nearby city of CWCville and the various antics of Mayor Chandler. Kevin hoped that the bus driver would just hurry up and get them there soon. The sun had almost vanished below the horizon, and he still had no idea where they were or how far it was to Pallet Town.

**Viridian Forest, near the road**

Hidden by shadows from the trees overhead, three figures lay prone on a small hill overlooking the Viridian-Pallet road. The distant light from the approaching bus cut through the twilight with ease, but the already-conspicuous vehicle might just as well have had a huge bulls-eye painted on to each and every side. Indeed, the watchers had been tracking the bus for a good ten minutes now - ever since the first rays of headlights appeared through the trees.

The man in the middle had a pair of binoculars raised to his eyes, and was observing the vehicle's occupants with interest.

"One driver, four guards, fuckload of kiddies," he growled to his comrades. "'Karps in a thirty-foot steel barrel."

"'Karps with guns," commented the woman to his left. "Probably a few attack mons, too. We should be fine. Ted, your call."

The third man rose to one knee and squinted, holding a hand to his brow to cut down the glare. "Let's do this. Lilac, ring him up."

Lilac unhooked a walkie-talkie from her belt and twisted the knob at the top. "Shockwing, Observer, come back."

"_Observer, Shockwing,"_ a teenage boy's voice crackled through the speaker._ "Are we good?"_

"Ready to blow, Boss. Just waiting for clearance."

"_What did Clay see?"_

"Light guard, armed, maybe mons."

"_Good. Take them down and bring me the kids. Out."_

Lilac stowed the walkie-talkie. "We're in business, guys. Prepare for trouble."

"Make it double," Ted and Clay replied simultaneously.

**Viridian Forest, Pallet bus**

"…and I don't know, I just really like the sound of his voice," Julie sighed wistfully. "I'm so glad he's trying to get into politics. I'd actually _want_ to listen to his speeches!"

"Yeah, _lame_," snorted Max. "You just want to marry him. Hey, maybe he'll…maybe he'll double the offer. You know, give you two rings for the price of one."

"You're _supposed_ to get two rings, you dumbass. One's for the engagement, one's for the wed-"

"Knock it off," muttered Kevin as the two siblings argued behind him. "We should be there by now. Where the hell are we?"

"Dunno," replied Max. "Hey, I'm gonna go hang out with the guys in the back. All this girl talk's making me sick."

Julie shoved her brother forcefully out of the seat and stretched out. "Oh, YEAH that's better. I thought my legs were going to stick like that forever. So what do you…"

"_E…LEC…__TRODE__!"_

_BOOM!_ The front half of the bus lurched into the air, propelled upward by some unseen explosion beneath the forward wheels. Kevin only had a split second to grab the seat ahead of him before he was thrown backward by the shock wave. The bus windows shattered all at once, covering the seats and floor with tiny bits of glass. Julie screamed and covered her face. Through the chaos around him, Kevin could hear a faint whining in his eardrums - a high-pitched _eeeeeeeeee_ like the sound of a TV turning on. The four security officers had their guns drawn now, and were scanning the treeline, paying no attention to all the kids screaming and crying around them.

"STAY DOWN!" one of them shouted as a pair of girls started to rise. "EVERYONE GET DOWN! DON'T MOVE! GET YOUR HEADS DOWN AND STAY AWAY FROM THE WINDOWS!"

"Is anyone hurt? Is everyone okay?" asked a second guard as she hurried down the center aisle, quickly checking each would-be trainer for injuries. One boy had a jagged cut below his eye where a shard of glass had slashed across his skin, but other than that, none of the bus' occupants had been severely wounded. Even the driver was still alive, albeit shaken and terrified.

"Pallet, Pallet, come back," the first officer growled into a speaker on his uniform. "Pallet, I say again…" He tapped the device, checked his watch, and cursed loudly. "Fuck! They knocked us off the grid!"

Kevin glanced at his watch, his heart pounding rapidly. The guard was right; the screen had gone blank.

"The sons of bitches EMP'd us. We're going to have to jump-start the engine," another security officer spoke up. "Ray, you got an Electric?"

"Goddamn it, all I've got is a Pidgeotto!" shouted the driver. "I can do it manually, but I'm gonna need some help!"

"That's exactly what they want," muttered the officer. "Okay, two-yard spread. Watch the treeline and set up your 'chokes as soon as you get out there. Ray, you wait for our signal before you…AAAAAAAAAGH!"

In the confusion, none of the security detail had noticed the single vine creeping in through one of the windows. In the blink of an eye, it had wrapped itself around the unfortunate man and yanked him through the side of the bus, tearing the metal frame apart like tissue paper.

"CONTACT!" screamed the female guard as she rushed to the window, pistol in hand. "Loose the 'Chokes! OPEN FIRE!"

Kevin and Julie covered their ears and instinctively hit the floor as gunfire exploded around them – from beyond the trees as well as from inside the bus. The guard who had been snatched was still screaming as the Victreebel pulled him toward its gaping, dripping maw. Before it could devour him, two bullets from one of the other guards ripped through its swollen body. A gush of green acid quickly spread across the road, some of it splashing onto its victim's arm. The Pokémon shuddered and keeled over, flapping limply.

As the wounded officer leapt to his feet and desperately tried to tear off his dissolving sleeve, two Pokéballs bounced on the ground beside him and burst open, birthing a pair of Machokes in a blaze of white light. One grabbed the man and quickly tore the sleeve off, paying no heed to the acid, while the other set about beating the wounded Victreebel into submission.

On the other side, the battle had only grown worse and worse for the remaining security officers. They were hopelessly outmatched and unable to see, but nevertheless kept pouring a fierce barrage of bullets into the dark Viridian woods. Kevin noticed that one of the two girls who had tried to stand up before was now clawing her way past her seatmate in a desperate bid for freedom, while the other was doing her best to prevent that from happening. She might have succeeded, too, had it not been for the two rifle shells that pierced her lung and neck. The poor girl slumped over, her life trickling out onto the seat.

With a horrified scream, the other girl pushed her dying friend onto the floor and bolted for the emergency exit. Crouched on the floor next to Julie, Kevin could hardly tell what was going on…except that they were losing, badly.

"_MAAAAAAA…choke…"_

A piteous roar from outside quickly faded to a dry rattle as one of the Machokes took a round to the chest. Hot blood splashed across the side of the bus, and the Pokémon fell dead, its last breath frozen in its throat. The guard outside was firing frenziedly into the trees, oblivious to the Machoke's fate. A bullet zipped past his shoulder and he whirled around, loosing off three quick shots at a shadowed figure beyond the treeline. The shooter dropped without a sound. Distracted by his brief victory, the officer never noticed the semi-conscious and dying Victreebel crawling towards him, its mouth bubbling with acid.

"_TREEEEEE…BELLLLLLLL…"_ it gurgled, spewing the last contents of its bulbous, ruptured cavity all over its unsuspecting victim. By the time the Pokémon finally gave in and died, only a greasy red puddle and a few scraps of dissolving cloth remained on the road.

Something huge and monstrous roared off to the right of the bus. Crawling forward on his hands and knees, Kevin grabbed Julie by the arm and pulled her out into the aisle. The fleeing girl had managed to open the side emergency exit, but before she could make a break for safety, a muscular purple tail coiled around her waist and lifted her screaming out of the bus. With a single hideous _crunch_, the cries mercifully ceased. A gush of warm liquid sprayed through the shattered windows, spattering onto the children inside. The murderous Arbok wasn't even close to being done with them, though. Hissing ferociously, it began striking at the metal siding with its head.

At the front of the bus, two of the three remaining security officers had nearly expended their entire ammo supply. Taking notice of the assault to her right, the woman ripped her own Pokéball off of her belt and tossed it through the window at the Arbok. A flash of light, and the Machoke had the giant snake in a death grip, pounding away at its head even as two venomous fangs sank deep into the muscles of its upper arm.

Another shot pierced the bus hull and caught the female guard in the side, rupturing her liver. She fell with a strangled yell of pain, kicking and convulsing as a sticky red pool widened beneath her torso. Kevin scrambled to avoid the dying woman and pushed Julie ahead of him down the aisle. Miraculously, Max was still alive and grappling with the emergency exit lever at the back of the bus. If the three of them could just get far enough without their attackers noticing…

"CEASE FIRE!" roared a voice from the woods. The shooting quickly died down. The Arbok and Machoke reluctantly released each other and backed away slowly. For the two remaining guards, this peace couldn't have come at a better time. They were down to a grand total of four bullets.

A group of men and women, all clad in white flak jackets with a red R stitched across the chest, emerged from the darkness, weapons in hand. Kevin could count at least five assault rifles. Small wonder they'd been outgunned so easily. Taking advantage of the distraction, he and Julie crept up to Max and opened the rear door. One by one, he urged the kids out onto the road, then followed suit, crouching to avoid being spotted by the group of terrorists.

"To protect the world from devastation…something something…you know the rest," the foremost man rattled off disinterestedly. His comrades leveled their guns at the two guards and the driver. "The only words you need to hear right now are these. Surrender now or prepare to fight."

"Um, don't you mean, 'prepare to die?'" asked the Team Rocket soldier next to him.

"Look, I didn't invent our motto, you entrance-spoiling shithead," the leader fired back. "Way to ruin my aura of intimidation. Uh…anyway…" he continued, turning back to the bus. "Look, we don't want any more bloodshed. Surrender all of your Pokémon, your weapons, and the kids, and we'll let you go."

The guards glanced at one another, at the Team Rocket mercenaries, and back at the children cowering in the seats. There might have been nine left, not counting Kevin, Max, or Julie.

"Fuck it," they said simultaneously, tossed their guns out the windows, and sprinted out the door and down the road as fast as they could.

The lead terrorist looked surprised. "Well, that was…convenient. Okay, back to work. Stow your mons, round up the survivors, and get 'em out of here. Patrols are gonna be coming down on us from every direction and we want to be anywhere but here when they arrive. Clay, kill him. Jan, sorry about your plant – we'll get you something else for next time. I think Nait might even let you have a Beedr-"

_BANG!_ Julie whimpered as the gunshot cracked and faded into the night. Kevin knew they'd shot the driver. They didn't care about anyone but the young, un-indoctrinated trainers cowering inside the bus. Team Rocket, Naitsirhc in particular, was always on the lookout for new soldiers. There was nothing Kevin or the two Molvanian kids could do for the remaining nine. If they were smart, maybe they'd accept Naitsirhc's offer and keep their lives. If not…well, trainers went missing in Viridian Forest all the time.

"Run…for the woods…when I say to," he whispered through clenched teeth. Julie and Max nodded, too scared to argue. The bus door creaked open and Kevin could hear what sounded like two pairs of boots climbing inside.

"God DAMN it," growled another mercenary. "Why didn't you shoot for the _guards_ instead of perforating the whole fuckin' bus? Way you were firing, you probably killed about six of 'em."

"I did not. That was collateral damage and you know it. Anyway, your snake would've eaten the rest if Nait let it. You told me you trained him."

"I never said I trained him to puss out. Hey! Hey, SIT DOWN! Yeah, you in the front! Anyway, we could've ended this in two minutes if that bitch hadn't tossed out that fucking 'choke. Naggy'll probably be slithering all weird for the next month or so."

"Go!" Kevin pushed Max and Julie ahead of him, then dashed for the tree line as fast as he could. At this point, the only thing he cared about now was getting as far away from the bus as possible.

The three of them somehow managed to reach the safety of the forest without being spotted. As soon as they were safely concealed behind a fallen tree, Max and Julie nearly collapsed, exhausted and panting. Kevin sat down on a mossy rock and rested his head against the tree trunk. He just needed a little rest…they had to keep moving and get to Pallet before Team Rocket decided to go looking for escapees…

"_The fuck do I do now?"_ he whispered to himself.

The three fugitives waited in silence while the shouts in the distance slowly faded away. Kevin spent most of the time gathering a little pile of good-sized stones, just in case he needed to defend himself during the night. Max and Julie stayed put, and seemed to be taking their near-death experience incredibly well…that, or they were both in shock. Kevin's thoughts flashed from the slaughter to his family to the attack on Station Square and back again. Why was he even out here to begin with? A Pokémon journey? He hadn't even been away from home for a full day and already everything had gone to hell. Now he was stuck in the middle of Viridian with no map, no food, water, weapons, or any of the luggage he'd brought from home, and two next-to-useless tourist kids who were, at the moment, probably being eyed by thousands of starving wild Pokémon.

On the bright side, they _had_ managed to avoid a forced indoctrination into Team Rocket. That, at least, was something that had gone right.

But at what cost?

"I think they're gone," Julie spoke up. "We're gonna have to walk there now, aren't we?"

"Not to Pallet," replied Kevin. "I think our best bet is to head back towards the freeway once the sun comes up. We'll stay here tonight. You two try and go to sleep."

"'Kay," said Julie, and dozed off immediately. Max quickly followed suit. Soon the Molvanian kids were snoring off the urge to fall asleep himself, Kevin shook his head and turned his eyes back to the forest surrounding them. Only now did he fully realize what kind of a situation they'd walked into.

Through the trees, shadowy figures leapt and growled in the distance, flashing back and forth between bushes and rocks as they hunted and fought one another. In the treetops overhead, clusters of pod-like cocoons hung motionless from the branches, staring down at the three runaways with hauntingly empty eyes.

_They haven't evolved yet, what are you so scared of?_ Kevin thought to himself as he watched the creatures above. He'd played enough games of Who's That Pokémon? with Lucy to know they could only be Kakunas – and unfortunately, what they grew into was _anything_ but friendly. He had no intention of hanging around long enough to see them hatch. The highway couldn't be very far off, and if they just kept walking north in a straight line…

_Thump._

The sound was faint, very faint, but it had unmistakably come from directly above him. Something had landed on top of the fallen tree, and was now making its way down toward the sleeping kids. Kevin felt the hair on his arms prickling up as the intruder approached. It was giving off some sort of faint static electricity field. Slowly, not daring to make any sudden movements, he reached for a jagged, fist-sized rock from the pile beside his leg. If they were lucky, the thing might only be a Pikachu. If not, well…

_Thump._

It was right above him now…and definitely larger than a Pikachu.

Gritting his teeth, Kevin braced himself for the attack. _Jump down. Come on, jump down and let's see how long you last…_

"What'd you find, Rosey?" a girl's voice whispered. Kevin froze. _People? Out here? What the fuck's g-_

_THUMP!_

A grotesque pink monster, four feet tall with pointed ears and covered with spiky fur, stood before him. In the dim moonlight, he could barely make out what looked like a pair of boots, gloves, a skirt, and a Raichu-like tail with a lightning bolt tip, but this thing was clearly neither human or Pokémon. Its eyes were a freakish mess – the whites were seemingly fused together as one like some hideous imitation of a cyclops, yet there still remained two separate irises and pupils. It almost reminded him of that blue hedgehog who had defeated the Perfect Chaos monster two days prior.

Sonic might have been strange-looking enough, but this thing looked as though it had just stepped out of a portal to hell.

"FUCK!" he screamed, and hurled the rock straight at the demon's face. It shrieked in terror and raised its hands to block the projective, but to no avail. The jagged lump of stone caught it square on the cheek and sent it reeling to the ground with a cry of pain and surprise. Kevin lunged forward and stood up, grabbing another rock from the pile to finish the job.

"GO! DAVID!"

Kevin never heard the girl's scream, nor did he see the Pokéball land on the ground four feet away. The monstrosity at his feet was crying, holding its bloody face with one hand as it held the other out toward him in a pleading gesture.

_It's begging for mercy,_ he realized. _All right then, take it._ He raised the rock, readying himself for the killing blow.

_BAM!_ The breath left his lungs with a _whoosh_ as something huge and scaly tackled him from the left, bowling him over and over like a ragdoll hit by a train. The rock fell harmlessly away.

_Well, that's it_, he thought, trapped helplessly in the creature's grip. _We're all fucking dead. Good job._

His head slammed against a tree, and the world went dark.


	4. Chapter 2: Chu d'etat

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 2: Chu d'état**

**June 1998, Kel's cabin, the woods near CWCville**

When Kevin finally opened his eyes, the world had changed.

He was lying in a sort of wooden room - a log cabin, most likely – on top of a large table with an inflatable mattress, a few pillows, and a light cotton sheet surrounding him. A single unlit fireplace was set into the wall in front of him. Beams of sunlight streamed through the cabin's windows, and outside, he could see trees, the shore of a shimmering lake, a bright blue sky, and fluffy white clouds.

He was either extremely lucky…or extremely dead.

The darkness and terror of Viridian Forest were long gone, but the memories remained clear as day. Kevin remembered everything: the long bus ride, Max and Julie, the Electrode blast, the attack by Team Rocket…all of it replayed in his head again and again like some sick highlight reel. He'd thought for sure it was all over after that thing pounced on him, yet here he was, alive and well, albeit suffering from the mother of all headaches.

Taking care not to make any sudden movements, the wounded teenager sat up slowly and rubbed his eyes. He was still wearing the same T-shirt and jeans he'd had on the bus. Something soft had been sloppily wrapped around his head – a cloth bandage, most likely. Kevin wasn't in any particular hurry to examine the injury. If he was lucky, it might only be a bad bump or a scratch. If he wasn't, things were about to get incredibly painful.

"Ah, fuck," he groaned as little drumbeats began hammering around inside his skull. The sound of his voice was somewhat encouraging. At least he could still talk…as far as he could tell, his brain wasn't quite damaged to _that_ extent. Maybe he was in better shape than he…

The floor was pink.

Kevin stared down at his feet and blinked, hard.

The floor remained pink.

Looking around, Kevin noticed that something was very, very wrong with this log cabin. Either the interior decorator had taken a leaf out of Andy Warhol's book, or else something was _seriously_ wrong with the part of his brain that controlled his sight. The table he was sitting on had been painted a garish yellow-orange, the same color as the row of kitchen cabinets he could see through the open door frame opposite the fireplace. The kitchen floor itself was made from wooden boards, but these were bright yellow. Everything else seemed relatively in order, though. At least the walls weren't turquoise.

_Sure, why not?_ Kevin thought helplessly as he looked around, terrified. _Now I'm going colorblind. Maybe if I…_

"Kevin?"

A fourteen-year-old girl stepped into the room. Her brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail beneath a typical Pokémon trainer's cap. She was wearing a blue T-shirt with a heart on the front and a darker blue skirt. In her arms lay a large bowl of steaming stew.

Kevin's mouth dropped open with shock. _"Kel?"_

"I…I didn't think you were ever going to wake up!" his cousin exclaimed. "We thought you were in a coma or something."

"We…wait a minute." He glanced around. "There were two kids, both around your age. Did you…"

"Julie and Max? Yeah, the police gave them a ride over to CWCville. We waited near the road until they came to investigate the bus…God, I can't believe you were _in_ that. The Pallet road's blocked off now, and there's been news choppers circling over Viridian for the past day and a half."

"That's how long I've been out?"

Kel nodded. "David didn't mean to hurt you like that, but you were about to kill Rosey. I'm really sorry about your head - I wasn't thinking."

"Wait…" Realization dawned on Kevin. "David? You mean…you mean I got tackled and knocked out by a Dragonite? And what was that…Rosey…_what the hell was that pink monster?_"

"Be nice to Rosey." Kel frowned and shot him a reprimanding stare. "She _did _manage to find you three in the middle of nowhere."

Kevin shuddered in revulsion, remembering the scant few glimpses he'd managed to get of the creature before he'd almost killed it. Those _eyes_… He couldn't imagine how his cousin had gotten ahold of such a monstrosity.

"What…is it?" he croaked.

"Her full name's Rosechu…or maybe that's her species name. I don't know – she's the only one of her kind I've ever seen before. She told me she's an Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. I've never heard of that type before. Remember that Raichu I had? It got struck by a rainbow a few days ago, and I think it transformed her into a new species of Pokémon. Isn't that awesome! I finally have a really, really rare Pokemon! Well, I've got David, but this…Rosey's one of a kind!"

Silence reigned as Kel's words sank in. Kevin didn't know whether to laugh, cry, or go insane. Odds are, he was going to end up doing all three if he didn't get some logical answers soon.

"A rainbow…hit your Raichu…and turned it into…_that_," he said, very slowly and carefully, eyeing Kel with barely-concealed skepticism. "An…Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. And it _speaks_? And you _kept_ it?"

Either his cousin was trying to pull off one of the greatest practical jokes in history, or else she was really telling the truth. Kevin hadn't seen her since she was ten, but Kel never seemed the lying type. Maybe, just maybe, this insane story was somehow possible. Something nibbled at his memory – a vague recollection of a flash of white light and a fifteen-mile rainbow…

"STATION SQUARE!" he yelled, immediately regretting it as his head nearly exploded from the pain.

Kel looked confused. "What do you mean?"

"The attack…_OW_…that Perfect Chaos thing attacked Station Square…there was this gold hedgehog and a Pikachu and they somehow collided and this huge rainbow shot up into the sky…"

"Okay, I think we need to get you out of here. I'll drive you to CWCville General…you must have more brain damage than the paramedics said you had. Kel put down the soup bowl and hurried back through the door to the kitchen, ignoring her older cousin's protests.

Kevin stood up warily and walked toward the front door, eager to find out where exactly he was. His head still hurt, but if he moved slowly enough, the throbbing never reached above a dull ache. He reached for the door handle to open it…

…and found himself staring straight at the demon he'd nearly killed two days ago. In daylight, Rosechu was slightly less intimidating than she had been that night in Viridian…well, to be fair, a _lot_ less intimidating. She wore only a white hair band, a matching magenta blouse and skirt combination with blue stripes, as well as a pair of sleek rubber boots – also magenta and blue. Her tail, unchanged from its Raichu state, was still yellow and white - a stark contrast the pink spiky fur that covered her body. On her head grew a pair of neat pointed ears, a small nose, and long, fluttery eyelashes. If it hadn't been for the freakish fused mass of optic tissue in the center of her face, she might have passed as somewhat cute.

"Hi Kel! I picked you a pretty bunch of za…" The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's chattering voice broke as it realized who it was talking to. "Oh! Uh…um…hi…Kevin, right?"

Kevin took a deep breath, stifling the scream of shock and terror that was building in his throat. "Hello…Rosechu."

"Oh, hey Rosey!" Kel appeared behind him, smiling as her bizarre friend stepped inside. "Did you have fun today? Aww, did you pick all of those just for me?"

"Yep!" Rosechu's face scrunched up into an insipid smile as she held out a handful of fresh-picked zapbuds. She sniffed the air. "Mmmm, something smells delicious."

"I just finished making some stew for lunch," explained Kel as she took the flowers. "Bet you can't guess what kind it is!"

"EEEEEE!" Rosechu squealed with delight and anticipation, instantly forgetting all about Kevin. "Brunswick Stew! I can't wait! Let's eat!"

"Actually Rosey, I was just going to drive my cousin over to CWCville. We'll have the stew for dinner tonight. Want to come along?"

"Yeah! Can we please go to the mall like last time? Please? Pretty please?"

Unnoticed by the two, Kevin slipped through the doorway and toward the lake as quickly as he could. One more sickening second of that abomination's voice and he might have vomited then and there. He was starting to wonder if maybe he _had_ fallen into some sort of coma after all. Things were just getting too weird to believe anymore.

At the edge of the water, he sat down and stared across the glassy surface. _All I ever wanted was a Pokémon journey of my own. Now look what's happened. I lost all my stuff, I don't have any money, and there's no way I'm ever going to be a trainer now. _Kel had told him that the road to Pallet was closed,but even if that wasn't true, there was no telling whether Oak would even be willing to accept new trainers after the massacre in Viridian.

Jack Shaw's words came drifting back to Kevin through his subconscious. _You're my son, and I just want you to get out and do something with your life. Just…listen to me for once. You aren't your cousin._

Was that the reason he'd wanted to start in the first place? To be the very best, or to prove that Kel wasn't the only member of their family who could lead a career as a Pokémon trainer?

_Fuck it,_ he thought as he up a rock and hurled it into the water. _Looks like I'm gonna have to cut my losses. Wonder what kind of job openings this CWCville place has…_

"Kevin! We're leaving!" shouted his cousin from the doorway. "You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine!" Kevin stood up and headed for the cabin. "Tell you what, don't take me to the hospital, I'm fine. You can just drop me off at the mall."

Kel looked confused. "Wait, what? What are you going to do?"

"Hopefully, find something to do with my life." Kevin smiled. "Come on, I want to see what CWCville's like."

**Two months later, August 1998, CWCville Shopping Center**

"Naitsirhc, son of Giovanni!" The fiery-haired teenager yelled out his challenge to everyone within earshot. "Team Rocket, brighter than light! Surrender now or prepare to fight!"

"Release Rosechu, now!" demanded Sonichu, raising his fist in defiance. A flurry of sparks crackled from his cheeks.

Naitsirhc grinned. "Then we will fight! Zapdos! Go!" With a flash of white light and a noise like a clap of thunder, the hovering legendary bird swooped down from above. Flapping its jagged wings, it let out an earsplitting shriek and divebombed its opponent.

Sonichu instinctively spun into a ball and launched himself toward the Zapdos. The battle was on.

Kevin couldn't believe this, even after what happened…

The day had begun like any normal work day for him: wake up at 5:30 a.m., shower, shave, bowl of cereal and a Pop-Tart…the usual. He'd left his apartment at 6:15 and hopped on the bus to the CWCville Shopping Center. Once there, he entered through the side security door, exchanged a quick hello with his coworkers, and headed for the locker room to suit up.

Being a mall cop wasn't the easiest job in the world, but it paid the bills.

"Anyone catch the news last night?" Matt Clark, another security guard, asked to no one in particular as he twirled the dial on his locker back and forth aimlessly.

"Yeah, caught the last few seconds," replied Billy Kenner from the next aisle over. "The kid's fourteen! He shouldn't be making _death threats_."

"Dude, he's got half the strength of Team Rocket behind him. Once Giovanni kicks it, he'll be running the entire organization. If I were in his shoes, I'd be making all the threats I wanted."

"Yeah, I remember when his dad was that young." Billy, a veteran of both CWCville Mall and Vietnam, had been around quite a bit longer than either Matt or Kevin. "You know he was studying to be a Gym Leader before all this shit started? Government rejected his application."

"Well, he got his wish," muttered Jake Linneman as he strapped a Taser to his belt. "Hey Kevin, you didn't happen to see Naitsirhc or Giovanni when they hit that bus, did you?"

"Come on, Jake, he doesn't need to talk about that," Matt cut in. "Bad memories, you know?"

"Nah, it's fine." Kevin shrugged. "I've been sleeping a lot better now. By the way, thanks for recommending those ocean sound tapes."

"Aren't they great?" Matt finally found the right combination and pulled open the locker door. He looked around inside. "Glad to hear they're helping. You didn't happen to see my watch anywhere, did you?"

"Sorry, no."

"Hey guys." Laurie Till, another long-term mall cop, emerged from the adjacent storage room carrying her brown uniform. "Did I hear you talking about terrorists just now?"

"Yeah, we were. Didn't you see the news?" Jake replied distractedly, in the middle of attacking his curly red hair with a wet comb.

"I did. Listen, that stuff's fine to talk about in here, but keep it to yourselves when you're on duty. People are jittery enough as it is without all these protests going on."

"Protests?" asked Kevin.

"Yeah, over by the food court…people didn't take too kindly to the Mayor's response to this whole Naitsirhc issue."

"Why, what'd he say?"

"Want to guess?" Matt cleared his throat and delivered a passable imitation of Christian Weston Chandler. "I'M _WORKIN'_ ON IT!" He slapped his hands to his sides as a final touch, to the great amusement of the other mall cops. "Who knows? He might actually pull himself away from his video games and come down today, if the protest gets too loud."

"I'll take the food court watch today if no one else wants it," Kevin offered.

"Be my guest." Laurie tossed him an extra can of pepper spray. "You might need that. Call me if they get too out of hand."

"I will. See you guys out there." Kevin buttoned up the rest of his uniform, closed his locker, and left his coworkers to their conversations.

CWCville Shopping Center was hardly a place of respite, but in the fifteen or twenty minutes between the time when he punched in and the time the doors opened, Kevin liked to just walk around and watch the stores set up for the day. Mall cops here had a relatively easy shift, at least when compared to some of the restaurant and retail employees who arrived at 5 in the morning just to set up shop.

Most of the shopkeepers and employees were too busy to notice him, but occasionally he would successfully strike up a conversation with one or two of them. He conversed frequently with the manager of the Comic, Game, and Hobby Place on the second floor, and would sometimes even stop by during breaks to see how the in-store Pokémon card tournaments were going. The manager, Michael Snyder, was actually a pretty cool guy, though he could still be very strict with any kids who misbehaved, cheated, or called each other names.

The food court was unoccupied but for old Mitch the janitor and a few restaurant staff firing up their grills. Mitch must have heard the story about the protest group, since he seemed to be preoccupied with cordoning off a section of the floor…a reservation, no doubt. Kevin and the rest of the mall security team knew full well what the janitor's opinion of CWCville's mayor was. Chandler's attitude toward black people like Mitch was hardly a secret. If there ever arose an opportunity to embarrass Christian or undermine his reputation, he would always be on it within seconds.

"How's it hangin', Mitch?" he called across the atrium.

"It's lookin' to be a fine day, Officer Shaw," replied the janitor as he straightened the last pole and clipped on a velvet cord. "Might just see a few goodhearted citizens standin' up for what they believe in for once."

"Protest, huh?"

"A regular freedom brigade, more like." Mitch straightened up, cracking the tendons in his shoulders. "I tell you what son, you stick around here a while and perhaps our dear mayor himself will choose to grace this food court with his pudgy visage."

Kevin laughed. Mitch always had a flair for the dramatic. "Let me guess…you've got a surprise for him?"

"Oh, that I do, Officer Shaw, that I do. But you be a good boy and don't say nothin' that might otherwise unjustly incriminate an old man like me."

"I keep telling you, just call me Kevin. None of this 'Officer Shaw' bullshit. And don't worry, I won't say a thing…if you tell me what it is you did."

Mitch winked. "You're a smart kid, trappin' me like that. All I'll tell you is that the Burger King girl's in on it. Ain't that right, Allie?" he yelled over his shoulder.

"If they ask, I have no idea who you are!" a young woman's voice called back.

The old janitor chuckled to himself. "She's a darling, make no mistake. You two should go out for lunch or somethin' one of these days." He leaned forward. "I think she likes Thai."

"We'll see. I don't even know her yet." Kevin glanced at his watch, just as the PA system crackled on. "Here we go."

"_Attention shoppers,"_ boomed the automated announcement system like it did every day at 7:30. _"The CWCville Shopping Center is now open. Please have a nice day, and remember to stay true, honest, and straight. Mayor Chandler thanks you for your business."_

Mitch scoffed. "Bet if he could, he'd tell 'em to add 'stay white' as well." He picked up his broom and resumed sweeping.

Kevin felt a little stab of pity at the injustice of Mitch's situation. The man was homeless, he slept in a Soup Hotel whenever possible, he couldn't leave CWCville, his salary was atrocious, and to top it all off, the mayor was working day and night to make his life even more miserable. Kevin wished there was something he could do, but the sympathy would have to wait for now. Customers were streaming in through the front entrance and dispersing into various stores, eager to peruse the merchandise.

Now came the hard part: waiting. Kevin leaned back against the wall and tried his best to project an air of authority. He was a mall cop, yes, but mall cops were an important part of the city's security force. Sure, they weren't allowed to carry guns, their brown uniforms made them look more like postal workers, and the most badass thing they did was stopping the occasional pickpocket, but they still worked right below the mayor's office. Granted, it had once been a large storage room back in the days before Chandler had inherited his father's empire and decided to move his whole operation right into the Shopping Center to lessen the distance between himself and the nearest Chick-Fil-A, but…

"Mr. Officer, hey, Mr. Officer!" A little girl with odd green-dyed hair and wearing what looked like a Japanese schoolgirl's uniform ran up to him, interrupting his thoughts. "Do they sell smoked cheese here?"

"I don't think so," answered Kevin, uncertain of how else to reply.

The girl looked down, placed her right hand against her cheek, and dashed off, vanishing into the stream of shoppers without a word. Kevin shook his head. _Where do these people come from?_

"Excuse me." A blonde woman wearing a purple dress and a red hair band stepped out of the crowd, along with a good dozen or so men and women who were holding an assortment of cardboard signs. "We were told security was friendly here."

"Just as long as you and your friends don't cause any trouble," Kevin replied, and unclipped the velvet cord to let them through. The woman looked familiar, though he couldn't quite remember where he'd seen her before…

"Thanks a lot," she replied. "Will the mayor be coming down today?"

"I'm sorry, but Mayor Chandler's business is outside my knowledge, ma'am."

The woman narrowed her eyes, but there was no hostility in her stare…only pity. "You have no idea what goes on up there, do you? You just go about every day waiting for your next paycheck, never realizing that the man you're guarding has been…"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa." The young mall cop raised his hands, his authoritative demeanor momentarily forgotten. "Look, lady, I get it. You don't like the mayor's policies, and frankly, neither do I, or any of my coworkers. We're not sheep…we're just trying to earn a living."

"You might not even _have_ that badge tomorrow if Chandler gets his way," muttered the woman.

Kevin finally realized where he'd seen her face before – on a billboard advertising the Piedmont Virginia Community College, formerly the Piedmont Kanto Community College. Sometime over the past month, some government officials had, for some unknown reason, decided to change their entire region's name from Kanto to Virginia. In any case, he was now talking to the Dean of Student Services herself, Mary Lee Walsh.

"What do you mean?" he asked.

"Just wait and see," replied Walsh, and left to join her fellow protesters. Kevin shrugged and walked off to find a new standing spot…preferably one with fewer inquisitive shoppers.

"Hey Kevin!" a familiar voice called. Looking to the left, he saw Kel waving at him from across the atrium. Her Dragonite, David, stood beside her, towering a good three feet above her head. To his immeasurable delight, she appeared to have left Rosechu somewhere else.

"Kel! How you doing?" Kevin worked his way through the mass of shoppers, who parted as he approached. His badge was at least good for crowd control, it seemed.

"Fine and dandy. You?"

"I'm okay, I guess. Today hasn't been that bad so far."

"Well, that's good to hear. Say hello to Kevin, David!" Kel smiled cheerfully as she patted the Dragonite's snout. "We're here on a special occasion. Rosey's got a date today. A _shopping_ date."

Kevin stared at his cousin in silence. A vein above his eye pulsed involuntarily. With just eight words, Kel had drained all of his excitement away. She'd brought the pink abomination after all.

He swallowed. "So where…where is she now?"

"Oh, probably going through every clothes store in the mall," laughed Kel. "I gave her my credit card and some cash so she can get some lunch for herself and Sonichu. I told 'em not to spend more than a hundred, though. I'm not made of money."

"Okay." It took a few seconds before the one unfamiliar word of the bunch managed to work its way into Kevin's brain. "Sonichu?"

"A male Electric Hedgehog Pokémon," Kel explained. "He followed Rosey home, so we decided to keep him." She giggled. "I think they're in _love_."

Kevin had never been more lost for words in his life. There were _more_ of these things? If what she said was true, and this Sonichu Pokémon actually existed…_NO! No, no, no, no, no! _He didn't even want to _think_ about what the outcome of them breeding would be.

"So what are you up to?" asked Kel, mercifully changing the subject before Kevin could visualize Rosechu's potential offspring. "Wait, did I interrupt your job? I'm sorry!"

"Nah, forget it." Kevin pointed to the center of the food court where Walsh and her group of activists were chanting and waving signs. "They're the most exciting thing that's happened all day anyway."

"Is that…Mary Lee Walsh? The lady from those PVCC ads?"

"Yeah, I didn't recognize her at first, either. I don't know why she's here."

"Well, I'm gonna see if The Game Place has a tournament today. Maybe the kids'd like to pet David." Kel gave her cousin a quick hug. "See ya later!"

"Say hello to Mike for me," replied Kevin. Kel smiled and hurried off toward the nearest escalator, accompanied by her Dragonite.

Kevin turned back to face the ongoing rally, his head spinning. Where had this Sonichu even _come _from? If Kel's Raichu had been transformed into Rosechu by the rainbow that had shot out of Station Square…

_The Pikachu._

It all fit together suddenly, clear as crystal. When the blue hedgehog Sonic took on his gold form and attacked Perfect Chaos, the monster had knocked him out of the air and into the feral Pikachu, creating an explosion of energy that somehow transferred part of his essence into both the rainbow and…

_Nope, nope, no way, that's just fucking retarded,_ he thought, silently resolving to never again think too deeply into concepts beyond his understanding. He instead focused on the protesters. Their cardboard signs were quite well-drawn…then again, they _were_ teachers and school staff. It was difficult to read the moving letters at this distance, but he could just barely make out a few sentences. Only the last one really caught his attention.

**MORE FUNDING FOR SCHOOLS, FEWER GAMES FOR MAYOR!**

**GET 'WORKING ON IT!' ALREADY!**

**GIVE THE TUGBOATS TO THOSE WHO NEED THEM!**

**EQUAL RIGHTS FOR MALL COPS, NOT JUST BLUE AND BLACK!'**

What did they mean, 'equal rights for mall cops?' To the best of Kevin's knowledge, he, Matt, Jake, Billy, Laurie, and all the others had just as many rights as the other citizens of CWCville. And anyway, Mayor Chandler wouldn't do anything to undermine his own unofficial security team…would he?

The hours ticked on by as morning gave way to noon. Kevin took his lunch break as soon as the clock struck twelve and stopped in at the nearby Sbarro for some pizza. Mall cops ate free in certain restaurants, courtesy of the more generous managers. Thankfully, this Sbarro honored that courtesy…for up to two slices per person. He grabbed a pair of Italian sausage and mushroom slices and found a table back near the Burger King where he could both watch the demonstration and eat.

Walsh and her friends were holding out well enough, and had even drawn a sizeable crowd. A few of the audience members had actually entered the square and were chanting along with the PVCC protesters. _Guess they succeeded at getting the word out, at least._

"…and after lunch, I am going to check out the whole second floor, sweetbolt! Kel said they've got an Aeropostale and a Lady Foot Locker…Ooo, let's visit Glamour Shots over here – we can get our picture together! Doesn't that sound _fun_?"

"It will certainly be fun, because when we are together, things are always fun, and because you are my heartsweet, that makes the fun that much sweeter!"

Kevin froze. The warm, delicious pizza turned to ash in his mouth. He'd expected to run into Rosechu and her "sweetbolt" Sonichu, but not like _this_. Pretending not to have noticed the two Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, he slowly turned and glanced over his shoulder.

Rosechu was now accompanied by what he could only describe as a creature identical to Sonic in size and stature, but with a lightning bolt-shaped tail, bright yellow fur, brown stripes, black eartips, and red conductive cheeks like a Pikachu. It was completely naked apart from a pair of blue running shoes and white gloves, yet Kevin noted a suspicious lack of genitalia. At least Rosechu had a dress on.

Of course, Kevin had been focusing on these little details just to keep himself from going berserk and Macing both of the abominations then and there. Under normal circumstances, he would have been obligated to go put an end to Sonichu's wanton indecent exposure, but for one thing, he was pretty sure the mall's security rules only applied to humans.

For another thing, Sonichu had no dick.

The two Electric Hedgehog Pokémon were getting their fair share of odd looks from the other shoppers, but they seemed oblivious to all this attention. They stopped at a table and sat down next to one another, holding hands. Only now did Kevin realize they had brought lunch with them. Sonichu had a cheeseburger, fries, and a soda, but Rosechu seemed content with a tiny salad. The hideous couple wasted no time and dug into their food hungrily. After only a few bites into his burger, though, Sonichu's face suddenly contorted into a disgusted grimace.

"Ahh…that salad was great!" sighed Rosechu, even though she had only eaten a few forkfuls of lettuce. She looked over at Sonichu, puzzled. "What's wrong, sweetbolt?"

Sonichu gulped. "I…I…h…hate…p…p…pickles!"

_Pickles?_ Kevin couldn't help snorting with laughter as he realized what Mitch had been talking about earlier. _You sly old bastard!_ He'd convinced the Burger King girl…Allie, that's what her name was…to "forget" Mayor Chandler's rule – no pickles in any of hisburgers. The food wasn't actually _illegal_, but Chandler hated pickles about as much as Sonichu seemed to hate them, and thus had decided to create a law just to address one of his pet peeves. Being in such close proximity to the mayor's office, the CWCville Shopping Center's Burger King usually only served pickles by request.

Today, however, was different. Kevin _really_ hoped the protesters were annoying Chandler enough to get him to actually come downstairs. He couldn't wait to see his reaction to…

_CRASH!_

A chorus of screams and terrified gasps swept through the sea of shoppers as something huge, yellow, and winged plunged through the glass roof above the food court. Kevin scrambled out of his seat and fell to the floor, barely avoiding a slash from the creature's steely feathers. Grabbing for the Taser at his belt, he leapt up, raised the stun gun…

…and found himself staring up in shock and terror at the legendary bird itself…Zapdos.

_Arceus…God…help me,_ Kevin prayed silently as the Taser slipped from his trembling fingers. Even if he'd managed to somehow fire it, the reverse shock would have vaporized him then and there. Keeping his eyes locked on the hovering Zapdos, he began slowly backing away. With one hand, he unhooked his radio and spoke the dreaded words…

"Code Red, Code Red. 1308 in progress. I repeat, 1308 in progress. Send backup now."

"_Holy shit. We're coming, kid! Hang in there!"_ Billy's voice shouted back through the speaker.

"HELP!"

Kevin looked up to see Rosechu hanging from the Zapdos' talons. Below, Sonichu was yelling up at the creature, ordering it to let go. It wasn't listening.

_CRASH! _A second window shattered, this time on the ground floor. Electric bolts snapped and crackled through the air as some great four-legged beast lunged into the mall. A lone rider sat atop its back, his face obscured by a hooded jacket and a black bandana.

"_RAI…KOUUUUU!"_ howled the massive legendary beast. The rider threw back his hood and pulled off the mask, revealing himself to the panicking crowd. A collective gasp surged through the huddled shoppers as they recognized the goggles, the green jacket, the blue shirt with a red letter R in the middle…

"Naitsirhc, son of Giovanni!" The fiery-haired teenager yelled out his challenge to everyone within earshot. "Team Rocket, brighter than light! Surrender now or prepare to fight!"

"Release Rosechu, now!" demanded Sonichu, raising his fist in defiance. A flurry of sparks crackled from his cheeks.

Naitsirhc grinned. "Then we will fight! Zapdos! Go!" With a flash of white light and a noise like a clap of thunder, the hovering legendary bird swooped down from above. Flapping its jagged wings, it let out an earsplitting shriek and divebombed its opponent.

Sonichu instinctively spun into a ball and launched himself toward the Zapdos. The battle was on.

Kevin couldn't believe this, even after what happened…

_WHAM! _The spinning Electric Hedgehog Pokémon curved upward in a Sky Uppercut, landing a fierce blow right beneath the Zapdos' beak. Stunned, the great bird reeled backward, shook its head to recover, and struck back with a savage Drill Peck that would have perforated Sonichu's torso about half a hundred times…had the attack actually connected. For such a horrendous-looking creature, Sonichu moved with surprising agility – one of the many qualities he'd inherited from the fusion of…

_NO! Stay in the present!_ Kevin's brain screamed at him. The battle was raging on, but it looked like the bystanders had sensibly dispersed, leaving the two Pokémon with a large clear space to duke it out in. He needed to get out of the way.

As Sonichu leapt into the air and slammed down on his opponent with a crushing Mega Kick, Kevin bolted for the nearest restaurant. The shockwave from the impact struck a moment later, shattering every window and pane of glass within thirty yards. Kevin stumbled, managed to stay upright, and fell right through the wide open door frame that led into the Burger King. Even the thick glass doors hadn't survived the blast.

A savage gust of wind knocked him forward to his knees. Kevin flung out his arms to break his fall and winced as tiny shards of broken glass pierced the palms of his hands. Ignoring the pain and the blood trickling down his fingers, he staggered into the nearest booth…and found it already occupied by a teenage girl in a Burger King uniform.

"Get down! Quick!" yelled Allie, grabbing him by the wrist and pulling him into the booth as a second air blast from the Zapdos' Wing Attack struck the restaurant, knocking tables, chairs, and condiments askew. Kevin covered his face with one arm and wished that the nightmare would just come to an end. Beside him, Allie looked as if she was doing the same.

Outside, unseen by the two occupants of the Burger King, Sonichu had landed below Naitsirhc's Zapdos. With a spin and a yell, he launched into an enhanced Double Team maneuver. In less than three seconds, nine Sonichus surrounded their opponent in a ring. As powerful and ancient as it was, the legendary bird had no idea which Electric Hedgehog Pokemon to attack now. It was, for lack of a better term, confused.

The final countdown began.

Ten. The eight clones flashed white as energy built within their nonexistent bodies. The true and original Sonichu leapt skyward.

Nine. Rosechu gazed at her sweetbolt in terror, silently urging him to rescue her.

Eight. Sonichu's feet sped into a circular blur. Unbelievably, he actually began running in midair. How he'd managed to do that would remain one of the greatest Pokémon mysteries for years to come.

Seven. Hurling himself forward at the Zapdos, Sonichu threw a vicious punch at its leg, forcing the talons open. Rosechu dropped free, screaming as she plummeted earthward.

Six. Sonichu dove after his heartsweet, reaching out to grab her as they fell together.

Five. Rosechu felt her sweetbolt's gloved hands encircling her, and knew she was safe at last.

Four, three, two, one… The pair of lovehogs – Sonichu holding Rosechu in his arms – hit the ground and sped away.

Somehow breaking every conceivable law of energy, mass, and motion known in the entire history of humans and Pokémon alike, the eight clones unleashed a massive storm of thunderbolts at the same time as their creator, who had just dropped off Rosechu at a safe distance and hurried back to finish the fight.

"Hey, I couldn't miss out on this!" Sonichu quipped, and added his own power surge to the mix. The lightning barrage struck the Zapdos all across its body, weakening the creature even though it normally could have absorbed such a shock into its own bioelectric organs. Just when it seemed ready to faint, a Pokéball sailed through the air and snapped open. The legendary bird shrank and receded inside the safety of the sphere.

Naitsirhc stowed the Pokéball in its belt slot and shot a look of pure hatred at Sonichu. His face twisted into a savage growl. "Enjoy your victory now, hedgehog, but we will meet again! And when we do, I will capture you for my father, and Team Rocket!" He patted his legendary beast on the shoulder. "Let's go, Raikou!"

Sonichu shook a fist after the terrorist as Naitsirhc and his Pokémon fled the scene. Behind him, Kevin and Allie emerged dazedly from the Burger King and gazed around the damaged food court in bewilderment.

"What…_cough cough_…what the _fuck_ just happened?" wheezed the mall cop.

"I…I don't…_cough_…I don't know." Allie wiped a thin layer of dust from her forehead. "Hey, your hands…look at your hands!"

Kevin glanced down. The glass shards had been driven deep into the skin of his palms by the fall. Blood dripped slowly from each finger, spattering on the tiled floor of the food court.

The crowd was cheering wildly, but Kevin could hear only a crackling in his ears and the sound of Allie's voice shouting to the crowd.

"HELP!" she screamed. "SOMEBODY HELP ME!"

Her plea went unnoticed by Sonichu, Rosechu, Kel (who had just arrived on the scene), and a fourth figure…a chubby, sweaty-faced man wearing a red, white, and blue-striped shirt.

"Out of the way! _Out of the way!_" Matt, Billy, and Laurie broke through the crowd and rushed toward Kevin and Allie. Matt was carrying a first-aid kit.

"Kevin! Kevin, show me your…oh, _God_." Laurie cursed as she examined the wounds in his hands. "We can't extract these here. Bill, call an ambulance and tell them to get over here _right now_." She glanced up at Allie. "Miss, I'm going to have to ask you to step aside, now."

"Thank you, Sonichu!" Rosechu exclaimed in the distance. "You're my hero, sweet bolt!"

"_Shut…the fuck…up…"_ Kevin hissed, now nearly hallucinating from rapid blood loss. He gritted his teeth and nearly screamed aloud as Laurie poured a bottle of water over his shaking hands. This was it: the absolute worst pain of his life.

"I was astounded with how you battled, Sonichu!" Kel added with a smile. "You rock!"

"_Kel…"_

"It's gonna be okay, Kevin. You're gonna be okay." The look on Matt's face betrayed his lie. Had Kevin looked down, he would have noticed that his hands were now lying in two pools of blood.

"THANK YOU, SONICHU!" roared the crowd.

"_Fuck…you…Soni…chu…"_ growled Kevin through a red haze of pain. Suddenly he realized who the third onlooker was. It only made sense. Nothing short of a terrorist attack could have jarred Christian Weston Chandler himself from _Super Mario 64_.

The mayor stepped forward awkwardly and grasped Sonichu's hand. Oddly enough, he wore some strange object around his flabby neck – a medallion of some sort. Odder still, it greatly resembled the head of the creature whose hand he was now shaking.

"A-as tha Mayor, of CWCville, I congraduate you on…on your victory, an' I thank you, for savin' da day. Good job, Sonichu!"

"Thank you!" replied the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon with a grin.

"An…an I would just like to, to inform all of you, my TRUE and LOYAL CWCitizens, that dhis, that dhis, uh, dhis affront by da homo Naitsirhc WILL NOT GO UNPUNISHED. Sonichu, wi-will you help me? Will you stand beside me in dhis crusade against da homos, da Team Rocket, and, uh da JERKS?"

"Yes, Father! You have given the gift of life to me and to my heartsweet Rosechu, so I will fight for you from now until the day I become one with GodJesus."

"_WHAT?"_ rasped Kevin, too softly for anyone to hear. _"But you didn't…he never…" _His voice broke and became unintelligible. Matt tipped some water into his mouth.

"An' furthermore," continued Chris, "I…uh, I will make it da highest priority to bring dhis Naitsirhc to justice, and to inshure that da lazy JERKOPS responsible for, uh, for letting dhis attack on my CWCville Shopping Center happen in, happen in da first place, are given da appropriate punishments for, for their LAZINESS!"

"WHAT?" shouted the mall cops all at once. A single second of silence passed before the yelling started.

"LAZY?" Matt leapt upright and stepped toward Chandler. "YOU SIT AROUND PLAYING VIDEO GAMES ALL DAY AND YOU CALL _US_ LAZY?"

Chris let out a short sigh. "I AM NOT LAZY! I, I have been working _very_ hard…_very_ hard at running dhis city of CWCville. I have…I have done many…"

"_What? _WHAT have you done for these people, Mayor?" Mary Lee Walsh stepped forward from the crowd, her eyes blazing with fury. "For _your_ people? Look around you, Christian. You never listened to me when I tried to help you with school, but listen to me now. CWCVILLE CANNOT LIVE LIKE THIS!"

"No. No, I am da Mayor, an' da city of CWCville is a…a vibrant, happy community!" Chris sighed again. "All you are doin' is spreading LIES and PANIC through my…through my great city of CWCville…you're, you're nothin' but a dang dirty WITCH!"

Mary Lee Walsh stood immobile against the insult. "Christian, you know I couldn't let you keep waving that…those _signs_ around. That's not the way to get someone to like you. You forced my hand, and I did what I had to do. It was all because of you, Christian. All because of you."

"STOP INTERFERING WITH MY LOVE QUEST!" whined the mayor at the top of his lungs. He clutched his hands together and pulled them back against his chest. "Don't, don't you force _my_ hand now. You SHATTERED my HEART and MURDERED my SOUL!"

Walsh sighed, though her sigh was not nearly as annoying as Chris's. "Christian, stop this. You know that won't…"

"CURSE-YE-HA-ME-HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!"

_BOOM!_ A blinding beam of energy exploded from Chris's outstretched hands and slammed into Walsh, blowing her straight through the side of the mall. Sonichu leapt into the air as the protesters charged, his cheeks sparking with electricity.

"SO-NI-CHUUUUUUUUUUU!"

Forks of lightning arced out of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's body and struck the PVCC teachers and faculty, electrocuting the entire group and a few nearby shoppers in less than five seconds. Kevin couldn't tell if all of the protesters were dead or merely stunned, but right now, he didn't care. Matt and Laurie were dragging him back toward the front door as the carnage unfolded around him. He saw Allie run past, her long brown hair askew from static electricity.

"An'…an' let it be known that all da lazy JERKOPS have been, have been fired, and are outlawed by da order of me, Christian Weston Chandler, da Mayor of CWCville."

"_Gaaahhhh…"_ Kevin groaned. His face was freezing. His hands were ice cold. Something slid under his back and he felt himself lifted into the air. Finally, they'd brought him a stretcher. A needle slid into the crook of his arm, and he felt a breath mask forced down over his nose and mouth. There was a soft hiss, and gas began to flow into his lungs.

"KEVIN!" Kel's voice rang in his ears. "Kevin, I'm sorry! I'm sorry! I'm so sorry!"

"_Don't…worry…about me."_ Kevin laughed bitterly as the anesthetic began pulling him down into the black peace of sleep. _"After…what happened…today…I'm pretty sure…my life…can't get too…much…worse…"_

**Six years later, January 2004**

It did.


	5. Chapter 3: Downward Spiral

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 3: Downward Spiral**

**Outgoing Message Intercept (Jerk class) – File PVCC6709, dated 10/21/2003  
True and original content has been altered to comply with Mayor Chandler's request.**

_Dear Tanya,_

_It's gone to hell. Everything's gone to hell. First that son of a bitch Chandler gets re-elected (big surprise there), then these Combo freaks show up, and now we're being evicted out of the suburbs to make way for a whole new bunch of chus that literally just showed up out of nowhere overnight. This is the last email I'm going to be able to send for a while…I don't know how long it'll be before I can get to another computer without being tracked. They know I was part of the recall campaign against Chandler…can't go anywhere without some damn chus watching my house or going through my mail. Don't reply to this, by the way. You're safe where you are – I don't want them using you as leverage. DO NOT TRY TO CONTACT ME._

_Damn, I must sound like some crazy homeless guy now. I'm sorry for rambling on like this. Let me start from the beginning. After these two Electric Hedgehog Pokémon showed up in the 1998 Shopping Center attack, Chandler went nuts. He started claiming that he invented Sonichu and Rosechu, and anyone who tried to tell him otherwise got labeled as an enemy of CWCville. I know he's got an enemies list, and I'm probably on it right now._

_Problem was, he'd fired all the security staff responsible for maintaining order in the Shopping Center. One cop, - some poor kid straight out of high school - was badly injured after the attack, and the moron still fired him. No medical, no severance, nothing. Out on the street with all of his mall cop buddies. Makes me want to strangle that fat fuck with razor wire. I couldn't even protest at the riots – he sent in that yellow bastard Sonichu to break up the crowd…probably at least ten people dead before they scattered. The city's crying for blood, but there's no one left to see justice carried out. Then, of course, there are the rumors of "straight camps" on the city outskirts…I've never seen one, but judging by the things I've heard, I don't think I want to._

_Once all the cops were fired, Chandler started replacing them with more and more generic Electric Hedgehog Pokémon (we call them "chus" for short) that he apparently manufactured for his own private army. Top that off with the five thousand or so mercenaries he hired to replace the CWCville police department, and we're looking at a full-scale military takeover. Outsiders can enter, but no citizens can leave…once you decide to live here, you're trapped for life. I've been communicating with some sympathetic organizations…there just might be a way for me to leave this place. Tell everyone that I'm okay, and above all, don't worry. I promised I'd get out. I just don't know when that'll be. Take care of Mom and Dad._

_I love you, sis._

_- Steve_

* * *

**January 12, 2004, CWCville slums, Soup Hotel #4**

The city of CWCville, a vibrant community with happy people, cool chicks, business, and a frustrated male…

CRASH!

"Watch where yer goin, ya moron!" growled Frank as an intoxicated hobo burst through the cafeteria door and staggered into the soup line with all the grace of Christian Weston Chandler trying to dance _Swan Lake_. "Goddamn inebriates'r gonna kill us all 'fore too long. Move it up! Move it up! Keep 'er goin', we're dyin' back here!"

"You'll get your turn as always, Mr. Douglas," one of the nearby volunteers assured him patiently. "Now please, stop yelling and wait your turn like everyone else."

Frank let out a frustrated sigh. "Always takin' too long, them old folks in the front. Least they get firs' dibs every day. Won't be long 'fore I'm up there holdin' up the line for the likes of you, kid." He turned to the young homeless man behind him and cracked a near-toothless grin. "No 'ard feelins, but a man's gotta eat. I ain't gonna pass it up."

Kevin Shaw nodded silently. He could hardly hear the old hobo over the loud chatter and din of the cafeteria, and anyway, all he wanted at the moment was a bowl of clam chowder and a few hours rest. After a whole day of listening to Frank's various stories while they sorted through dumpsters for salvage, he was more than ready to just go to sleep and try to forget he had ever had a life outside of CWCville's fourth soup hotel.

Six years had passed since that hot summer day in August 1998, and in that period, Kevin's life had fallen on hard times. The drive to CWCville General Hospital and the first few days of recovery hadn't been so bad – it was the aftermath that had wrecked him. At first, Matt and Billy and Laurie had stopped in every day to let him know how the protests were going. Kel came by as often as she could, and brought him all kinds of gifts: flowers, candy, Brunswick stew…

_What a sweet kid_, he thought, licking his lips at the memory. Just the thought of a hot steaming bowl of her delicious homemade soup brought a flood of saliva to his mouth. There was never any Brunswick stew in the cafeteria…only clam chowder, cheddar and broccoli, beef stew, chicken and dumpling, tomato…but never his coveted Brunswick.

The next few days had been far more disappointing in terms of hospital visits, and Kevin began to feel the first bitter claws of loneliness tightening around his chest. The glass had cut deep into his palms, dealing a sizeable amount of nerve and muscle damage. The doctors and surgeons said it would take a good three weeks for the hands to heal, and two more after that for a full recovery. As the days crawled by, Kevin had slowly descended into a stir-crazed state, often staring at the clock for hours, waiting for visitors who might not come at all.

Finally, ten days in, Laurie arrived. Her face was worn and haggard, with bruises scattered all across the right side as if she had been a victim of some serious domestic abuse. Without a word, the former mall cop collapsed into the chair beside his bed and looked at him for nearly five minutes before speaking the words that ended his life then and there.

"_We lost, Kevin. I'm sorry. We all fought for you…for us…but we lost."_ Her voice was choked with sobs._ "Billy…they took Billy away after the last protest three days ago. We…we still haven't heard from him. It's all over, Kevin. I'm so…I'm so sorry."_ She stood up and left in a hurry, wiping her eyes on her jacket sleeve.

Kevin never saw her again.

Two days later, he'd received a very unexpected visitor. The girl from the Burger King, Allie, showed up while he was sleeping. She'd left him a get well card and a bag of delicious hot cheeseburgers…with pickles! _Courtesy, your old pal Mitch,_ read a second card inside the bag. _P.S. Our plan worked – Mayor ate one! Should've seen his face! Laughed my ass off for hours._

Allie's card was somewhat longer, but no less encouraging.

_Kevin, I'm so sorry about your hands. I hope they get better soon, and that everything works out with your job. My manager gave me the day off, so I decided to visit you and see how you were doing. There aren't any mall cops at the Shopping Center anymore, and I'm getting scared. Stores are being looted at night, but the Mayor says we need to stop bothering him and take care of our own merchandise. See, this is why we need people like you! Your friend Matt keeps telling me they're trying to pool some money to pay your hospital bill, so I put in my whole salary from last week. Hope it's enough! Anyway, once you get out, let's go celebrate! Dinner's on me._

_Get well soon!_

_-Allie_

It hadn't been enough. It hadn't even been close. Due to the mayor's new financial policies after Sonichu had taken the position of his second-in-command, medical costs shot through the roof. Many patients were turned away before they could even finish recovering. Three days before Kevin was scheduled to leave the hospital, they came to throw him out. They didn't even cut the bandages off his arms or give him back his belongings. When Matt picked him up in front of the hospital, he had nothing more than a paper gown, the bandages, and a pair of boxers he'd fished out of a laundry basket. Matt drove him home, let him pick out a new set of clothes that fit, and tried to help Kevin find a new occupation.

In CWCville's sad economic state, finding a job was about as easy as trying to thread a sewing needle with two-inch-thick steel cable. Yet somehow, Mayor Chandler persisted in his belief that it was all because of "all tha lazy people an' tha homos" that the city's economy was failing. Within months, he'd instituted a new passive-aggressive reeducation program that portrayed homosexuals (mostly men) as lazy, parasitic slobs who lived off of the blood and sweat (mostly sweat) of hard-working, HONEST people, like himself (mostly himself). Kevin was legitimately surprised when Matt confessed to him that he knew Laurie was a closet lesbian, and that he had a pretty good idea where she'd disappeared to. Kevin hadn't slept at all that night, and later suffered repeat nightmares of Laurie being tortured in some faraway prison camp.

Years passed. Kevin spent the first few working in various fast food restaurants and stores, interspersed with some truly unpleasant temp jobs. Most of the regular businesses he managed to apply for would keep laying off employees every couple of weeks to avoid the ridiculous new taxes Chandler had imposed on them to fund his new obsession. In fact, if the mayor's financial records were ever analyzed in depth, it would show that by 2004, almost ninety percent of the city expenditures could be traced back to Sonichu and Rosechu-related matters.

At first, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon had been a mere curiosity of the mayor's, but after five _new_ creatures showed up one day, his interest had spiked to near-obsessive levels. The Chaotic Combo was forged from the telekinetic Magi-Chan Sonichu, the survivalist Wild Sonichu, the devout Angelica Rosechu, the pugilistic Punchy Sonichu, and the completely useless Bubbles Rosechu. This powerful and almost omnipotent team was quickly converted into Chandler's personal advisory council, and soon his anti-homosexual efforts had doubled, thanks largely to Magi-Chan and his ability to read minds at a distance.

Furthermore, rumors kept flying of new Electric Hedgehog Pokémon appearing everywhere. There seemed to be no end to the creatures, wherever they were coming from. So far, Kevin had never seen a baby or egg version of one, but he was almost certain Chandler was trying to find a way to make them reproduce. The true and original Sonichu and Rosechu had been set up in a nice two-story house in the suburban district between downtown CWCville and the Shopping Center. Being Chandler's ultimate pride and joy, the couple, of course, lived tax-free - all their expenses were paid for out of the city coffers.

It wasn't long before dozens, then hundreds of the "chus" as they came to be called, surfaced from out of nowhere to further plague the human population of CWCville. An intensive study published by Professor Oak classified them as two entirely new Pokémon species formerly unknown to science – one all-male (_Navitaricius sonichu)_ and one all-female (_Navitaricius rosechu_), both of which were perfectly adapted to breed with each other. The mayor immediately granted his creatures additional rights, legal protection, and even top priority at restaurants, bars, and public facilities. Many long-standing small businesses had to close to make way for chu-only housing and other amenities built specifically for the new master race. Soon, another large group of human families in the suburbs would be relocated to the inner city to allow a fresh wave of chus all the comforts of home.

If anyone wished to complain, they were more than welcome to take matters up with Mayor Chandler or leave a message with his receptionist Allison Amber, a former Hollywood actress turned glorified secretary. Of course, they would first have to get through the mayor's newly-rebuilt security network. Below Chandler was Sonichu, below Sonichu was the Chaotic Combo, below the Chaotic Combo were the EHPF (Electric Hedgehog Police Force, nicknamed "Sparkers" by the humans), below the EHPF was a whole army of Chandler's hired mercenaries, and below all of these were the oppressed and helpless masses of people who wished for nothing more than an end to the madness that had gripped their lives for six years.

Well, three years, actually. Around mid-2000, a small unexplained anomaly had appeared in the fabric of time and reality, causing everyone's aging process to grind to a halt. Babies could still be born, but never developed or started maturing until three years later, when the time rift finally dissipated. In the end, the anomaly was never explained or even researched. Chandler would keep avoiding the fairly logical questions concerning it, perhaps hoping no one would notice if he ignored them long enough.

Kevin had witnessed it all. He was caught in a landslide with no escape from Chandler's reality…trapped inside a rapidly degenerating hellhole of a city…dragged down with all the other innocents who had been forced to sacrifice their freedoms to feed their mayor's egomaniacal dream. A year ago, he had quit looking for new jobs and checked into one of the ten rapidly-filling soup hotels. He had now completed his journey…from potential Pokémon trainer to mall cop to temp worker to hobo salvager. What a life. What an adventure. What a way to end it all. Six years in CWCville, and he'd been reduced to scrounging in garbage bins and dumpsters with the likes of Frank, George, Carl, Missy June, and many other colorful characters who called Soup Hotel #4 their home.

And Kevin still hadn't heard a word from Allie since she'd left him that card.

"…an' then I told that sumbitch, I told 'im, 'No, I ain't got your damn burrito,' so 'e just up and socked me right in the eye…" Frank stopped and glanced back at him. "Hey. You all right, kid?"

Kevin noticed that he'd somehow reached the front of the line in the span of his flashback.

"Yeah…just tired," he grunted, and held out his hand for a bowl of soup.

"Good afternoon, Mr. Shaw!" The volunteer working behind the counter – a pretty girl with reddish-brown hair - flashed him a smile. "How's your day going so far?"

"Fine, Kacey," replied Kevin. "Any clam chowder left?"

Kacey's face turned sympathetic. "Ooh, sorry, we just ran out about two minutes ago. You gotta get here fast these days, otherwise…" She shrugged. "Chicken and dumpling, maybe?"

"Yeah, that's good." Kevin took a deep breath, savoring the rich aromas of meat and garlic as Kacey filled up a bowl and passed it to him. "How'd your date go yesterday?"

"Oh my God, Chris was fantastic! We went to see _Return of the King_ again and he took me out to this Indian restaurant afterward, and then…" Kacey giggled. "Well, you can probably guess what happened then, but it was fuckin' awesome!"

"And awesome fuggin' too, I bet," wheezed Frank. "Let's disappear, kid. Yer 'oldin' up the line."

Kevin hurried after his friend, much to the relief of every hobo behind him. The two men left through a side door to the alleyway outside. Frank was adamant about eating where "the Sparkies" couldn't smell his thoughts. From the many, many stories he'd told, Kevin had managed to piece together bits and pieces of Frank's previous life as a factory worker for CWC Orange Soda, a cheap localized knock-off of the popular Fanta orange drink. Apparently he'd been fired because he'd dared to ask why Mayor Chandler was buying up vast quantities of the drink faster than any normal human being could drink them. Kevin didn't really believe all of it, though. It sounded like Frank had just been laid off and couldn't find a dignified excuse.

Up the alley near the street, a few bums were busy panhandling. One in particular, a man with scraggly black hair and a striped wool hat, seemed more eager than the others.

"CHANGE! YA GOT CHANGE? Aw, come on, help a guy out, will ya? Come on, change!"

"Give it up Chester, ya moron!" Frank yelled to the capering bum. "Hey kid, y'ever wonder what that there purply chu…Maggie-Chan…what's 'e do all day? Just sit 'round 'n play his little Spot the Faggot game?"

"I don't know…frankly, I don't care." Kevin took a sip from his bowl. The soup was still far too hot to eat. He blew across the surface, hoping to cool it more quickly.

Frank chuckled. "Ya sound like the Mayor. This whole fuggin' city's gone to 'ell 'cause of 'im, an' we're the ones who 'ave ta pay the bills. Well, not us, we 'ad our turn, we did. Those poor souls…they're just clingin' on to a sinkin' boat."

"Yeah, I get it. Life fucking sucks."

The two hobos sat down to eat with their backs to the alley wall. Nearby, another homeless man sat with a worn-out guitar, singing some old folk song as he plucked a few chords. Kevin and Frank ate in silence, enjoying the soft, sad melody. It was a welcome relief after so many days of being subjected to so many of Chandler's Top 10 Favorites on KCWC…as well as the voice of that purple-blue fuckpump Jamsta Sonichu. All of the hobos in every single soup hotel were pretty much forced to listen to the chu DJ's half-intelligible ramblings as some sort of nightmarish wake-up call. Nearly half the homeless population of CWCville wanted him dead, and the other half wanted to burn down his studio, rip out his vocal cords, and _then_ kill him.

The soup was pretty damn tasty, but one bowl barely qualified as a meal. Nevertheless, Kevin inhaled his entire bowl before Frank had even finished a third of his.

"Ya gotta learn ta _savor_ it," the old man scolded, dealing him a sharp tap on the hand with his spoon. "Enjoy it now…way things're goin', those damn Sparkies are gonna be takin' over these hotels 'fore too long. Then where'll ya get yer soup?"

"Don't tell me how to eat," chuckled Kevin. He waited until Frank had finished, then rose and helped him to his feet. "I'm gonna get a little nap in before we go salvaging tonight. You talk to Carl and Missy June…see if they want to come too."

"Aye," Frank grunted, and handed him his soup bowl. "Take that in fer me, will ya kid?"

Kevin shouldered his way back inside through the smelly crowd of hobos, dropped off the bowls and spoons in the cafeteria, and made it all the way to the elevator without being yelled at by too many sweaty old men simply for the crime of him being younger than they were. He pushed the call button and stepped in when the elevator finally stopped on the ground level.

It took a good three minutes to reach the ninth floor, and by then, he was almost asleep on his feet. Swimming in a zombielike state of tiredness, he somehow found his way over to room 928. It took a few tries to get the keycard to go in the right way, but the lock eventually popped open.

Grateful he at least had a nice bed to sleep on, Kevin stumbled into his room, closed the door, kicked off his boots, lay down on the mattress, and crashed into slumber. Oblivious to the decaying city that surrounded him, he soon lost himself in a dream about some crazy game show with a giant spinning wheel full of Magikarps and Goldeens.

**Soup Hotel #4, three hours later**

The city of CWCville, a vibrant community with happy people, cool chicks, business, and a frustrated male…

CRASH!

Kevin was rudely wrenched right out of his nap by the thunderous blast of a colossal explosion somewhere nearby. Blinking sleep from his eyes, he instinctively rolled away and accidentally ended up toppling over the side of the bed onto the floor. The carpet softened the impact somewhat, but not completely.

"Ah, shit." Pushing himself upright, Kevin shook his aching head to clear it and rose to his feet. What had just happened, and more importantly, where was it happening?

CRASH! A second explosion - a bit closer this time - rocked the soup hotel. Kevin yelled in surprise as the window shattered abruptly, covering his bed with bits of glass. Wind whipped the curtain back to reveal the skyline and horizon beyond, but from his room he couldn't see any sign of a bomb or other significant damage to CWCville.

More impacts sounded outside, each one sending a fresh shockwave through the nearby buildings. If indeed this was an earthquake as he suspected, Kevin had no desire to stick around a place located nine floors above the ground. He grabbed his keycard, threw on his boots and a faded grey jacket, and ran for the exit.

The hotel room door swung open to reveal a scene of utter chaos. Dozens of hobos were clustered around the elevator, frantically jabbing the call button as if that had any impact on how fast it would get to them. A fire must have started somewhere in the building, because the sprinkler systems were up and running full-blast. The hall carpet, the walls, and everyone inside were drenched with water. The blaring shriek of fire alarms mingled with the wailing of infants and a chorus of panicked yells and screams from the frightened residents of Soup Hotel #4.

Kevin didn't have time to take any of these details in. He was already out the door and sprinting for the closest emergency stairwell with a few other hobos whose common sense still hadn't deserted them.

"What's happening?" he shouted to no one in particular.

"Earthquake!" a scrawny-looking hobo yelled back. "Get to the lobby! Run fer it!"

The stairwell was packed with filthy homeless men, women, and children, all of whom seemed to be doing their best to push past those in front of them. They'd turned the entire line into a human sardine can, moving at what looked like a speed of 0.5 miles per hour. Kevin glanced over his shoulder. The stairs at the other end of the hall looked somewhat less occupied than the closer option, but that would put him right in the middle of the…

Kevin shoved the beginnings of doubt out of his mind and whirled around. Water splashed beneath his boots as he plunged forward and sprinted down the hall as fast as he could. A room door swung open and a middle-aged woman hurried out, right in his path. Kevin bowled her over without a second thought and shouted a hasty apology over his shoulder. He knew he was being selfish, but then again, he was well past the point where he gave a shit anymore.

There was a small utility door between the hall and the stairs. Praying that it accepted resident cards, Kevin slid his through the scanner and was rewarded by a green light and a click. He burst right through the now-unlocked door and found himself in the almost completely deserted maintenance stairwell. Wasting no time, Kevin dashed down the stairs and nearly collided with another hobo on his way past the sixth floor.

"Watch it, you clumsy son of a-" the man shouted. Kevin couldn't hear the rest of the insult because he was already another floor down. Soaked, terrified, and unsure what to do once he made it to the lobby, he focused instead on keeping himself moving downstairs one step at a time. Right now, he was simply making things up as he went along.

Finally, he reached the familiar LOBBY sign. Kevin nearly dislocated a shoulder in his rush to get through the door, but at least he was safe on the ground…

The lobby had been flooded with hobos.

"MOTHER…FUCKER," gasped Kevin, and hurled himself into the fray like a complete idiot.

**Downtown CWCville, above the city**

Slaweel Ryam sat cross-legged on her hovering jetboard, her silky blonde hair whipping back and forth in the wind as she patiently watched Graduon's titanic stone golem flattening another of the repulsive Sonichu creatures beneath its foot. Bullets and electric shocks were ineffective against the automaton - it simply did not give a fuck how many of Chandler's goons were in the way. As far as she could tell, civilian casualties were minimal to zero, but the golem's frenzied stomping might possibly knock some buildings down. That was the last thing she wanted right now.

_At least I'm getting their attention. We'll just see how much longer Chandler can ignore this._

"You're absolutely sure this is the best way?" she shouted at the purple staff in her hand. "If we cause too much collateral damage, we might as well just give up now!"

"_My golem is well-disciplined, Ryam,"_ Count Graduon's sinister voice hummed inside her head. _"Do not fear for your innocents, but do not weep for the ones who lack the sense to flee."_

Slaweel gazed down and adjusted the jetboard's altitude so it brought her right to the level of the golem's shoulder. A firing line had been set up in the nearby plaza…the one the golem was heading for right now. Looking through her monocular, she noticed a few of the chus carrying long black tubes over their shoulders. _Bazookas._

"They've got heavy infantry setting up in the plaza," she muttered to Graduon. "How well can your monster hold out against anti-tank missiles?"

The ancient spirit chuckled evilly. _"You still doubt my powers, do you not? Very well."_ A flash of purple light exploded out of the purple sphere on the tip of the staff. The golem straightened its enormous body upright and stepped carefully down the street into the plaza, crushing another police barricade underfoot.

From where she was, Slaweel could hardly hear a thing above the howling wind, but actions definitely spoke louder than words in this situation. The teams of human mercenaries and EHPF officers opened fire as one, sending a fresh wave of bullets and several tiny grey smoke trails directly at the great legs of the stone colossus. A good three missiles exploded against the solid granite surface, but when the smoke cleared, she saw they had done no more damage than the assault rifle rounds.

"My mistake," she admitted, and wheeled her jetboard into a rapid descent. Effective or not, the other missiles were flying all over the place, impacting against the surrounding buildings, blasting cars into blazing piles of scrap, and blasting chunks of asphalt and concrete out of the street. She needed them out of the equation. "Hold on, Count. Ever heard of a strafing run?"

"_The term is unfamiliar to me,"_ replied the staff.

"Then you'd better hope I don't drop you." Slaweel slid Graduon into the strap across her shoulder, flipped her battle helm down over her face, and readied her trident. With a fiery roar, the jetboard's engines flared blue as she sent it hurtling through the air, straight for the Chandler loyalists' firing line.

In the plaza below, the unfortunate chus and human mercs were continuing their pathetic stand against the approaching golem. By the time they heard the shriek that heralded their doom, it was already too late.

Slaweel tore the jetboard out of its dive with an expert flip and stabbed her trident directly at the closest missile team. A white spear of energy erupted from the weapon's central prong and flashed down into the midst of the soldiers, vaporizing several and creating an explosion roughly the strength of an average C4 block. Three more aerial strikes decimated the loyalists' defenses, blasting mercenaries and Electric Hedgehog Pokémon alike to ribbons and completely annihilating their ground-to-air missile capabilities.

A burst of rifle fire zipped past her cheek, half a foot away from tearing her face off. Cursing at the top of her lungs, Slaweel whirled and unleashed a storm of blazing fireballs toward the offending merc below. The man never even had enough time to scream before the inferno turned him to ash where he stood. Any other survivors were now falling back, tending to their wounded, or else cowering in fear.

"_Impressive,"_ commented Graduon in her head. _"I look forward to working with you, Ryam."_

"I'M HERE FOR CHANDLER!" Slaweel shouted an ultimatum down to the loyalists, her voice radiating pure fury and defiance. She crossed her fingers and prayed they wouldn't call her bluff. "YOU'RE OUTGUNNED AND OUTMATCHED! GIVE ME THE MAYOR OR YOU'RE ALL GOING TO DIE!"

_And…here we go,_ she thought with a grim smile as three tiny shapes – blue, yellow, and orange - appeared on the horizon, flying towards the golem at supersonic speed. Gripping her trident with one hand and drawing Graduon with the other, Slaweel turned her jetboard to face these new foes. "Let them come. We'll shatter their hearts."

"_And we'll take over the world," _added the staff.

"You bet, ancient spirit." The woman rolled her eyes. Graduon was useful, to be sure, but whatever supreme authority was locked in that staff was definitely suffering some serious power delusions. Even now it was muttering something about being locked up for centuries by a couple of lame-sounding ancient clans…blah blah blah. All Slaweel Ryam wanted at this point was to strike Christian Weston Chandler and all his recolored abominations off the face of the earth…for good. And so far, she and Graduon were doing a pretty damn fine job.

Then Chris-Chan Sonichu, Saramah Rosechu, and Wes-Li Sonichu were upon them.

**CWCville slums, outside Soup Hotel #4**

Kevin burst out of the crowded lobby and into the street, nearly slamming into a car as he ran. The driver honked his horn and yelled out some unintelligible gibberish that might have been a profanity, but his intended target was already disappearing in between the tightly-packed traffic lining the streets of CWCville. Kevin weaved in between the cars with surprising agility, moving as if he were practicing parkour instead of running for his…

_Clunk._ Kevin winced in pain as his knee collided with the back of a taxi. _Not so agile after all, are you?_ He hobbled forward a few feet, then continued running after the crowd. He had no idea where to go or where these other people were headed, but anywhere was better than trapped in a fucking soup hotel in the inner city. How he'd managed to escape was still a mystery…must have just been _deus ex machina_ or some unbelievable measure of luck.

Unfortunately, Kevin hadn't seen any of his friends in the pandemonium. Wherever Frank was, he hoped the old man had enough sense to stay under cover and out of the way, not that it would do anything to help him against…

…the skyscraper-sized rock golem that was now towering over downtown CWCville.

Kevin's mouth dropped open and remained that way for a good ten seconds. Suddenly, his feet no longer obeyed the messages that his brain was screaming at them. Rooted to the ground with fear, he could only stand there, staring up at the colossal automaton with the kind of expression one would normally display if they'd just been found out that their mother was both a prostitute _and_ formerly a man.

"_Attention. Attention. Mandatory evacuation in progress,"_ a city PA system blared somewhere far away. _"Please proceed to the nearest designated safe zone. Do not attempt to communicate with or otherwise interact with…"_

Ablaze and out of control, an EHPF cruiser shot through the intersection ahead and smashed headlong into the side of an apartment, throwing up a large plume of smoke and a spray of oily flames. Miraculously, no bystanders had been hit, but Kevin could tell – even at this distance – that both of the chus inside the vehicle were now very, very dead. Around them, hundreds of people were abandoning their cars right in the middle of the road, heading for the nearest subway station or any other safe places they could think of.

With a thunderous creak of stone on stone, the golem turned and slowly raised its arms in a defensive stance. It had spotted something in the distance.

Up in the sky above CWCville, three airborne dots materialized and quickly reformed into a stack formation. Kevin had no idea what the UFOs were, where they came from, or what they were doing, but at this point, he no longer cared since…well…_the city was in the middle of a fucking golem attack._

Suddenly lights were flashing between the dot trio and the stone giant…three separate streams of what looked like yellow lightning bolts, a pure white energy beam, and a red-orange blaze. Each projectile struck a separate part of the golem's body - respectively, its eyes, its chest, and its knees.

The golem was reeling backward now, stumbling haphazardly across the plaza like a drunk. Through the chaos, Kevin noticed a fourth figure high in the sky - a purple and grey attack craft of some sort – speeding toward the three attackers almost as fast as a fighter jet.

Before the newcomer could reach them, the trio shot forward through the air and slammed into the golem's chest.

_CRASH! CRASH! CRASH!_

Again and again the line of colored spheres hurtled through the air, dealing massive damage to the giant enemy's weak points until…

_GRRRRRRNNNNNNNNN…_

In the back of his mind, somewhere buried in the deep recesses of his subconscious, Kevin could almost swear he heard someone screaming _"NO!"_

The golem groaned again, for the final time. Decapitated, kneecapped, and sporting grievous wounds all across its torso, it shuddered once and began to disintegrate. The massive stone construct collapsed with an explosion of clashing rocks and a single purple blaze of energy. Like a puppet whose strings had been cut, it fell.

Directly towards Kevin Shaw.

"Run, you idiot!" a fleeing woman yelled as she noticed him standing there in shock. Her words fell on deaf ears.

The world exploded around Kevin as the golem crashed down upon him like the giant from "Jack and the Beanstalk," slamming into the plaza and an adjacent apartment building with enough force to gouge a massive misshapen crater in the asphalt and brickwork.

Something snapped back into place inside his head. Kevin turned to run, but it was too late. The golem's remnants instantly crushed the helpless man to death beneath an avalanche of solid granite.

Well, that was what _would_ have happened, had a seven-foot sphere of bright purple energy not suddenly enveloped him. Kevin yelled in surprise as he slammed face first into the crackling barrier, but somehow suffered no major injuries. Outside, rocks crumbled to dust as they struck the shield wall, but not even a single shard of granite entered his protective bubble.

Finally, mercifully, the rockslide stopped.

When Kevin uncovered his eyes, the shield was gone. Hovering before him like the world's most badass surfer was a lone woman standing on what looked like Jim Hawkins' hoverboard from that Disney movie two years back…_Treasure Planet_…minus the solar sail. Her short purple dress fluttered in the breeze beneath a neatly-cut shock of blonde hair, a bronze helm that covered most of her face, and something that resembled a metal hairband with a pair of red-painted devil horns on top. She carried a red trident-like weapon in a sheath across her back, and was currently pointing a strange purple staff towards him.

Staring down from her jetboard, the woman raised her free hand and flipped the mask of her helm up to reveal her face.

"I know you," she breathed, almost too softly to hear. "The mall…you poor boy. You had no idea…"

Kevin's mouth dropped open so fast he nearly broke his jaw.

"YOU!" he shouted. _"Mary Lee Walsh?"_

"Another life, another time. You're not safe here." Walsh glanced skyward. A sudden look of fear spread across her face. "Get out of here! Get out of here now! Find us! Find the PVCC…"

_WHAM! WHAM! WHAM!_

Kevin cursed loudly and stumbled backward as three Electric Hedgehog Pokémon - a yellow Rosechu, an orange Sonichu, and a dark blue Sonichu with a medallion around its neck – slammed into the road between him and Walsh.

"Are you all right? _Are you all right?_" yelled the Rosechu over her shoulder.

"Get out of here!" The orange Sonichu motioned for Kevin to stay back. "We'll handle this! Go! Go!"

The blue one hadn't even noticed who they were talking to.

A high-pitched screech blasted through Kevin's head. Gasping in pain, he clutched at his forehead, desperately seeking the source of this mental anguish.

"_Another pawn for our little game, Ryam?"_ a sinister voice echoed around his skull. _"You are most diligent, it appears."_

Through a fiery red haze, Kevin could see the staff in Walsh's hand flashing purple, enunciating the words in his brain with every burst of purple light._ The staff…it's the staff…the staff is talking…_

"_You three,"_ continued the disembodied spirit, this time speaking to the chu trio, _"may have thwarted our plans, but we will meet again…for I am Count Graduon."_

The name made no sense to Kevin. Maybe it did to the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, but for now, he wanted no further part in these matters. Scrambling hastily over the pile of rubble that had once been the colossal golem, he began climbing out of the crater as fast as he could.

"_Until another day, hedgehogs!"_ Graduon chuckled evilly. With a burst of exhaust and a roar of firing engines, Walsh whirled her jetboard around and shot away down the street, leaving a faint smoke trail in her wake.

Atop the edge of the crater, Kevin collapsed to his knees, panting from exertion and coughing from the dust cloud that had enveloped the city after the golem's fall. He dragged himself to a good-sized chunk of rock and sat down to survey the damage.

Apart from the two buildings the golem had crushed on its way down, the city's collateral damage looked minimal, at the very worst. The only dead bodies he could see were of chu police and Chandler mercenaries…_no downside there_, he thought. Sure, the mercs might have had families, but they had sold their services to a madman nonetheless. It was a cruel rationalization, but then again, Kevin wasn't exactly feeling like sunshine and lollipops at the moment.

Down in the crater, the three chus were now talking amongst themselves.

"No use in chase…uh, chasing dhem now," muttered the blue one in a very Christian Weston Chandler-esque voice. "…since we will meet ahgain."

"Father!" a familiar voice called out from the street.

A yellow and pink blur sped down the crater and stopped in front of the other Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. Kevin's mouth would have dropped open in shock again, but by now he was too worn out to even care how much crazier things in CWCville got.

"I got here as fast as I could," Sonichu explained as he set Rosechu down on the ground beside him, "but it looks like I'm late."

_Wait._ Kevin could almost feel a fuse blow inside his head. _Father? What the fuck does he…_

"Don'…don' wowry about it, Sawnichu," droned the blue chu disinterestedly. "We three saved tha day!"

In a flash of white light, the three Electric Hedgehog Pokémon transformed. The yellow Rosechu became a young woman with blonde hair, a pink shirt, and purple gauntlets with bolt markings. To her left, the orange Sonichu had turned into an angry-looking man with brown hair and a grey shirt.

And directly in the center, the blue Sonichu pulsed with energy. Its tail retracted, its ears folded back and melted together to form flesh, and slowly, the form of an overweight, extremely unattractive man in his mid-20s emerged.

Apathetic as he was at the time, Kevin could hardly believe what he was seeing. Through some arcane means - dark magic, a deal with Satan, or a badly-written plot device - Christian Weston Chandler could now transform into a Sonichu.

"So Chris, how do we get back to Ruckersville from here?" asked the girl.

_The hell with it all,_ Kevin thought with a fresh sense of determination, and set off down the street to find Frank. Things had gone too far now. He wanted answers, and if Walsh's PVCC could provide them, that's exactly where he was going to head next.


	6. Chapter 4: Induction

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 4: Induction**

**March 17, 2004, CWCville slums, Soup Hotel #4**

"No salvaging tonight," Kevin explained to the four hobos seated around him in the bustling cafeteria. "Frank and I are going to find this place by ourselves. I'm sorry, but I can't risk all of you."

"Whaddaya mean, 'risk?'" Carl shot him an indignant glare. "Yer takin' that old bag 'o sawdust an' yer leavin' us here to sit 'round an' die 'o boredom listenin' to Chester's 'movie reviews' all night? Damn loony ain't been to a film in twenny years…"

"Bag 'o sawdust?" Frank drew himself up to his full height, which, when seated, was still a good two inches shorter than Carl. "Why I oughtta…"

"Quiet, and let the boy talk," growled George from behind a copy of the _CWCville Times_. "He's the only one who I want to hear right now."

Frank and Carl wisely shut up, though they continued to throw incensed stares at one another for a good thirty seconds.

"I've picked Frank, and that's final," continued Kevin, silently thanking George in his mind. "Once the PVCC contact gives me their address today, I'm going to find out what's really been going on. I've had enough of all these lies and false leads."

"And how do you know this isn't another one?" Missy June leaned forward and brushed a few strands of her long, unkempt hair out of her face. "How do you know they're not just some back-alley thugs like the ones we beat up the other night?"

"Why would anyone rob hobos like us?" Kevin replied. "And anyway, who on earth would go to this much trouble and spend so much time planning just to screw with one guy? I'm telling you, these people are organized. And they know me."

"Yah, I'll believe yer witch story when she comes down from the skies an' gives me a big sloppy kiss," grunted Carl. "Right on the nose. Yer chasin' a…"

George silenced him again with a single glance.

"So when do you meet this contact?" asked Missy June. Her voice still dripped with skepticism. "In some shady bar down on Boleyn Street? Has he got a trench coat and a fedora? Maybe…maybe he's a _she_, you know, a slinky, sexy woman in a black dress? You guys going to down a few martinis together? Come on, kid, you're not Humphrey goddamn Bogart. Let it go."

"He'll end up like Jake goddamn Gittes if he isn't careful." George's eyes narrowed as he glanced at his wife. "Listen, Kevin, take it from me. You walk into some abandoned place without any protection and you're just asking to be royally buttfucked…or you would be if that purple sphincter Magi-chan weren't watching. You keep this hidden away, and you only use it when you need it."

Something cold and steely dropped into Kevin's lap. Looking down, he saw that George had given him a large, slightly rusted hunting knife. It would just barely fit out of sight.

"I…thanks." Pretending to ties his shoes, Kevin leaned down and tucked the blade into his right boot. "I'll get this back to you when I…"

"No, you won't." George cracked the faintest hint of a smile. "You're going to find these people and start living. We've had good lives, all of us, and now it's your turn. Chandler took six years of your life away, and he'll have the rest too if you don't get out and do something. If anyone deserves to fight back…it's you, kid. You fight, you win, and you gut that fat sumbitch like the squealing hog he is."

Carl didn't say a word. Even he seemed to know this wasn't the time for sarcasm.

"Let's go, Missy. I could use another bowl." The couple rose and left the table. Missy June shook her head at Kevin, but there was a hint of acceptance in the look. She didn't approve, that was clear, but she knew she was in no position to stop him.

Frank and Carl hesitated, then followed suit. They hadn't gone six feet before their argument started up again.

Kevin spooned the last few drops of clam chowder into his mouth, savoring the creamy taste like Frank kept insisting he do. After finishing, he'd head outside to the alley and wait for the contact to find him. Tonight could very well be his last night, but he seriously doubted anything life-threatening could come from a little game of hide-and-"

"Nicely done." A young woman's voice sounded next to him, and he felt someone sit down on the bench beside him. "Don't look at me. Cameras. Pretend I'm just some random hobo who's too afraid to sit by himself."

"For all I know, you are," Kevin muttered through gritted teeth. The guy he'd met five days ago had said the contact would appear when he least suspected it, but this was too much. "I was going to the alley. You didn't have to come in."

"Yeah…I did. EHPF's occupied chasing a few of my friends right now, but they left a few Sparkers to watch the slums tonight. It was hard enough getting here, so you'd better listen if you want in."

Kevin listened.

"You've been looking for us a few months now, haven't you?" asked the stranger. "Can't say I blame you – Walsh never was that good at explaining things. I'm actually impressed she singled you out. We normally just pick new recruits up off the street if they're interested. You look like a good enough choice, so I'm extending a formal invitation. Here's my card."

She reached under the table and forced something cold and slimy into his hand. Kevin looked down, startled, and realized the woman had given him an entire pickle. Words had been cut into its surface – a single phrase:

**THE MOST OBVIOUS PLACE**

"Go to the corner of Lucas and Mimms. You'll know it when you see it." The PVCC contact tapped the pickle. "Eat that. Now."

Kevin slowly devoured the sour fruit. What a bizarre rite of passage - eating something the mayor wouldn't touch with a ten-foot pole. When he was finished, the woman was gone. He looked around, but couldn't see anyone fleeing into the crowd.

_Right,_ he thought with a new sense of determination. _My turn._

**CWCville slums, 1:00 a.m., the corner of Lucas St. and Mimms St.**

"Ya shure this's the place?" Frank leaned against a streetlight to rest, groaning as he massaged his aching back. "If we 'ave to go 'un more block, I'm callin' it quits."

"Positive," Kevin replied. "You stay here and I'll check it out. If this isn't it, we'll go home. I promise."

"A'right, ya be careful in there, kid, y'understand?"

"Don't worry about me. But just in case something goes wrong…" Kevin glanced down at his boots momentarily, then turned his gaze back to the old man. "Thanks for being such a good friend, Frank. Tell everyone back at Four that I said goodbye."

"Goodbye…Kevin." Frank grasped his hand and shook it. "Go kill all 'em Sparkies for yer ol' pal Frank."

Kevin smiled, turned, and headed across the street to the dilapidated bar. March still hadn't flushed all of the cold out of its system this year, and it was a chilly night. He stuffed his hands into his pockets to keep warm. The shivering, though…he wasn't sure whether that was from the weather or his own nervous feelings.

The unlit neon sign above the door read "**THE MOST OBVIOUS PLACE**." Kevin had to admit it; the contact's clue had been pretty damn clever. He would have thought to look in an abandoned warehouse or some empty parking lot.

The bar's windows were boarded shut. Graffiti covered nearly every flat surface he could see. There were no lights inside, no footsteps, nothing. Was there anyone inside at all, or was it just some elaborate prank? Were these people _trolling_ him? Was this the kind of thing the mayor kept ranting about in his periodic citywide video broadcasts?

Kevin climbed up the short stairway and knocked three times on the rotting wooden door.

No answer.

He knocked again. Still no answer.

_All right then, if I must. _Kevin tugged on the handle. As he suspected, the door swung open, creaking on rusty hinges. The inside of The Most Obvious Place looked like a slightly cleaner version of Mayor Chandler's office. Cobwebs shrouded the ceiling, while a fine layer of dust coated the tables, the barstools, the counter, the broken jukebox…each and every flat surface imaginable. The air was no warmer inside, due to the fact that every single window had been completely smashed. Several broken bottles lingered in the cabinets, though their contents had long ago been emptied by wandering hobos like him.

Kevin glanced around the bar in apprehension. Was this really where the PVCC had meant to meet him? It truly and honestly didn't seem like anyone was here.

There was another door in the wall opposite him – one that most likely led to the kitchen. Was that where they were? Kevin could feel tremors of apprehension tingling up and down his spine. It definitely wasn't just the cold now. The hunting knife in his boot knocked against his foot as he cautiously approached the door. He reached a trembling hand out, grabbed the handle, and opened it.

There was nothing before him but darkness and silence.

_Well, that's it, _he thought disappointedly. Out of curiosity, he took a tentative step inside the room and glanced around, hoping to see a light or some other sign the PVCC were indeed there.

_Whump!_

The sign came in the form of a black cloth bag out of nowhere that instantly enveloped his head, blocking out all sight and muffling all sound. Several pairs of rough hands clutched his flailing arms and pulled them down and back, preventing Kevin from fighting back or struggling. He felt something sharp touch his neck – the edge of a knife or a straight razor. _Oh God Carl was right Carl was right they're going to kill me…_

"It's okay, it's okay," a calm male voice - almost a whisper - sounded next his ear. "You're not being kidnapped…these are all safety precautions. We're going to take you somewhere safe so we know you weren't followed. Just do as we tell you and you're gonna be fine."

Kevin tried his best to nod without accidentally cutting himself on the sharp blade. A pair of handcuffs clicked shut around his wrists, pinning them behind his back.

"Good. Now just walk forward and don't stop until I tell you to. I'll steer. Don't worry, it's okay. We're just going for a little ride."

"Slumberland, Tomgirl Lead," a woman muttered into a radio a few feet away. "Target apprehended. Proceeding home. ETA in ten to twelve, provided we don't wake the Sparkers."

"_Copy, Tomgirl Lead. Bring him in."_

Kevin walked forward. There really wasn't much else he could do but obey these people. They definitely sounded like they were from the PVCC. The question was – did they think he could possibly be a loyalist? After he'd gone about twenty feet, he felt a door open and a chilly breeze on his face. They were outside now.

"Open the door," his captor ordered, pushing him further along. "All right, we're going to put you in a van now. Just step up right…there, there you go, that's good. Here, help him in, guys." Several more pairs of hands from inside the van grabbed him and helped him into a seat. Kevin could feel worn leather and bits of rough cloth beneath his hands. This vehicle was in need of some serious repair.

"All right, let's get out of here." The woman from before was seated right next to him. "Wait until we're a few blocks out, then take that hood off of him. He doesn't know where we're going."

Kevin waited in silence for a couple of minutes while the van backed up and accelerated into the quiet CWCville streets. He tried to remember their path, but a few sharp turns later, he no longer had any idea where they were. _So much for that movie tactic working in real life._

"Okay, we're good." A hand grabbed the edge of the bag and worked it up over his head. Someone else unlocked the handcuffs and removed them as well. "Kevin Shaw, meet the Tomgirls."

Of the five armed operatives clustered into the back of the van, four of them were men. The fifth – the woman seated beside him – was a stunning redhead with playful hazel eyes. Her nose and mouth were obscured by a black-painted dust mask, an article of clothing shared by the four men in the back. All of them wore Kevlar vests, brown leather belts with pistol holsters and knife sheaths, an assortment of grey, green, and brown cargo pants, grey jackets, leather boots, and black shirts with a half-maple-leaf logo and the letters PVCC stenciled in red.

_This is it,_ he thought with a shiver, glancing at the window. It was painted black on the outside, and a dividing wall was set between the front and rear seats, effectively concealing all surrounding sights from the passengers. _This is real. I found them._

"Look, we know how this must seem to you so far," the woman continued. "It used to be a lot worse. Think 'strip search' worse. Believe me…I know. They guys in charge are still going to ask you a few questions to make sure you're not a loyalist. Just a precaution. Chandler might be a retarded pile of shit, but those human mercs of his sure as hell ain't. They've been paying off spies left and right, trying to root us out. It would be just like them to go for a hob…homeless person like yourself."

"Unless they offered me my job and six years of my life back, I wouldn't even consider it," replied Kevin.

The Tomgirl leader nodded. "Yeah, we all know a little bit about you and your accident. Fuckin' Chandler. I think in a way, without you, none of us would even be here."

"Oh come on." Kevin rolled his eyes. "Don't make me sound like some…some all-important hero guy that everyone likes and can't do anything wrong."

"I don't like you," interjected one of the men. "I respect you as a person, but dude, you smell _awful_. And your hair looks like someone shaved a musk ox and glued the scraps all over your…"

"Okay, that's enough." The woman shot a reprimanding glare at the operative and turned back to Kevin. "I agree, you smell like a used diaper full of Indian food, so be glad we have shower facilities in Slumberland. The poor bastards over in ChinaTown have to use buckets on strings."

"Chinatown? CWCville has a Chinatown? I thought…"

"No, not _Chinatown_. _China_Town. The old red-light district? After Chandler had it all bulldozed because of too many gay bars, we took over an abandoned strip club there and expanded it into an operations center. We've got nicknames for all our HQs. Slumberland's in the slums, Hogwash used to be a sewer treatment plant, Wilderness is right near the mountain/jungle border, and ChinaTown…"

"Right, I get it." Kevin laughed. He felt more comfortable now, like he was a part of the group rather than a prisoner as he'd first believed. "So what do you guys even do?"

"Spying and sneak attacks, mostly. We're pretty much outgunned on all fronts if we went up against Chandler's goons…"

"_Anderson's_ goons," another soldier corrected her.

"He's still Chandler until we show the world his lies." She cleared her throat and continued. "Where was I? Oh yeah, without support, we've got no chance of even putting a dent in his private army. That's where people like you come in. We get a bad rep as terrorists and such…and it's pretty easy to see why…but compared with the kind of terror the mayor and his chu government keeps throwing at CWCville, we're almost the good guys, aren't we?"

"Yeah, I guess," mused Kevin. Finally, he was talking with someone who actually made sense.

"We are. Believe me, we are." The woman looked at her watch as the van began slowing down. "We also just arrived. Just do what they say and you'll have yourself a nice squad in no time. Don't get your hopes up for joining my Tomgirls or the Picklemen, though. Those guys are the best of the best…even _we_ know that. With luck, you'll make the White Medallions, the Cashiers or the ALBinos…maybe the Spines of Blue. Again, don't get your hopes up – these squads just named themselves after a few of the guys in charge. You'll see what I mean in a few minutes."

The van ground to a halt. Kevin heard the front doors open, and a metallic rumble sounded from behind the vehicle, as if a giant garage door was closing.

"Good luck, Shaw." The woman patted him on the shoulder. "Nice talking with you. I'm Jackie, by the way."

"Nice to meet you," mumbled Kevin, as the side door slid open. A spotlight flashed on, instantly blinding him. Somewhere far away, he heard the electronic shriek of a megaphone.

"_Kevin Shaw, please step out of the van and place your hands behind your head," _a voice echoed around the cavernous room. _"Tomgirls, report to the conference room for debriefing and your next assignment."_

Kevin did as he was told. Someone stepped up behind him and quickly patted him down. He felt the hunting knife being removed from his boot. That discovery earned him another, more thorough search.

"Okay, he's clean," reported the man who'd checked him. "All clear for interrogation."

"_Thank you."_ The spotlight clicked off, but Kevin's eyes still danced with colored lights. Somewhere, a door creaked open. Footsteps approached…many footsteps, too many for him to count. Blinking rapidly, he tried his best to make the bright dots vanish.

The cluster of footsteps slowed and stopped. Through the glowing haze in his eyes, Kevin could barely make out the shapes of about a dozen men and women standing in a semicircle before him. Only the central figure looked familiar. It might have been the horns.

"Hello again, Kevin," Mary Lee Walsh said warmly, smoothing her purple dress with her hands. She looked quite different without the battle helm, the trident and staff, or her jetboard. Up close, the former dean was a lot more attractive than she'd been while battling the mayor's Electric Hedgehog Pokémon form and his two allies. Her short blond hair shimmered as she moved, almost as if it were made of gold. A single red tassel encircled her waist, leading down the back to a cloth arrowhead, like a stereotypical devil's tail. "I'm glad you were able to find us at last."

"H-hello, Ms. Walsh," Kevin replied nervously.

Walsh chuckled. "Please. I'm not a dean anymore. Just call me Mary Lee Walsh – I prefer my full name. Our dear mayor won't fear a mere 'Ms. Walsh.'"

"I thought you said you weren't…"

"That I didn't go by that anymore? Oh, that's just for Graduon – the staff. He gave me a new name when I found him and gained my power. When he's around, I'm Slaweel Ryam. Otherwise, it's just Mary Lee Walsh."

"Okay." Kevin waited for Walsh to continue.

"Enough formalities, Mary," said a tall, blue-robed man with brown hair and a single black patch over his right eye. "Kevin Shaw, you're here because we need people like you. People who want the disastrous reign of Christian Weston Chandler to come to an end. People who are willing to fight…to lay down their lives, even…to make sure that this madman is removed from power and brought to justice."

"_Our_ kind of justice, Jason," a young woman with short black hair and glasses spoke up, then turned to address Kevin. "And we're the ones who will see this revolution all the way to the end, and document every step so future generations can learn from our mistakes. We let this cancer spread, and now our city's dying." She nudged Jason. "This is Jason Kendrick Howell, head tactical commander of the PVCC and founder of our strongest allied organization, the 4-cent_garbage Initiative. Mary Lee Walsh is our founder and supreme commander. I'm Vivian Gee, field intelligence officer and head archivist. You already know Kacey Devoria…"

"Hey Kevin!" a familiar voice shouted from inside the group.

To say that Kevin was astounded would have been an understatement. The soup hotel volunteer he'd known and talked to for half a year…had been a PVCC officer all this time? No wonder the organization knew so much about him. They'd been watching him for months.

"It was you!" he exclaimed. "You gave me the pickle earlier!"

Kacey shook her head. "No, that was Emily. She's the leader of the Picklemen, our finest elite Jerkop squad. You got escorted here by Jackie Romy, leader of…"

"…the Tomgirls," finished Kevin. "What's a 'Jerkop?' The mayor used to call us that in the Shopping Center when he was angry."

"Jerkop," explained the handsome, brown-haired, bespectacled man holding Kacey's hand, "is a term used by the imposter Ian Brandon Anderson to describe any authority figure he dislikes - usually mall cops like yourself." He tugged at the collar of his brown striped shirt. "We gave the name to our field operatives in protest of the way Anderson treated you and your colleagues."

"Okay, who the hell is Ian Brandon Anderson?"

"I'd love to field that question, Chris!" a familiar, loud, and excited voice blared. A bearded man in a blue OxiClean-labeled shirt stepped forward and raised his hands together in a dual thumbs-up. "Hi, BILLY MAYS here for the HONEST TRUTH about Mayor Chandler, and I want to tell YOU all about why the so-called 'mayor' is really just a deluded, power-hungry maniac! It's as easy as 1, 2, 3! After he inherited the office from his father, Robert Chandler, all he did was invent a phony religious script called the Anchuent Prophecy to make himself even more powerful! The unique design gives him supreme executive authority as ruler of all CWCville, PLUS, its cleverly-engineered loophole system grants him the right to control all of his citizens, their lifestyles, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, finances, entertainment, EVEN what they eat and drink! But here's the best part! The power ploy ONLY works as long as the people of CWCville believe that a man named Christian Weston Chandler is the one mentioned by the prophecy! Can you believe it? It's fantastic! Join now and receive a position in one of our many fine PVCC Jerkop squads! BUT WAIT! If you accept our offer in the next ten minutes, we'll…"

"We can't double the offer, BILLY, he's only one person," Vivian reminded the former infomercial celebrity. "But this whole Ian Brandon Anderson thing…it's a sort of smear campaign we thought up. We've been trying to convince people that the mayor isn't really this made-up Chosen One messiah, and that Chris here is the true and honest Christian Weston Chandler. Megan, any thoughts?"

"I think the important thing is that Kevin's already on our side," another young woman with long wavy brown hair spoke up. "He seems trustworthy enough, he's got more than enough reasons to hate Chan…derson, and with a bit of training, he could be a great operative. What more do we need?"

"Those bloody mercs hate Anderson as well," said an older gentleman with glasses and grey hair. "It seems to me that we cannot trust anyone, including this chap. No offense, old boy."

"James, look at him." Mary Lee Walsh glanced beseechingly at the British man. "He's been through hell these past six years. He's lost all his friends, his job, his life…I met him before any of you even knew he even exi-"

"No. I did," a higher, younger voice cut in. The group of PVCC officers began muttering amongst themselves, but parted nonetheless to reveal the shorter speaker.

Kevin did a double take. _"MAX?"_

"Hey Kevin." Max didn't sound a day older than when he and his sister Julie had first introduced themselves on that fateful bus ride to Pallet Town. "I had a feeling you were gonna show up here one day."

"But you…how did…and where's…"

"There is no Julie." Max's expression didn't change one bit. "She never existed, Kevin." His voice dropped to a chilling whisper. _"She died five years ago."_

"Max…I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"Oh no, it's all right. In a way, she's still here…" Max's eyes narrowed. A wicked grin spread across his smug little face. For an instant, Kevin could have sworn the boy's eyes had shifted to a different color. "She's always been here…"

"Bloody hell. You're downright disconcerting, my lad," scoffed James.

"Fuck you, Jimmy."

"Enough!" Mary Lee Walsh's command brought instantaneous silence to her associates. "Kevin, you already know Max. This gentleman is Mr. James Hill, better known as Jimmy Hill, the original creator of Sonichu and Rosechu. The young woman here is Megan Schroeder, Anderson's first "sweetheart."

Megan shuddered in revulsion. Whatever memories she had of Mayor Chandler, they weren't pleasant ones.

"And the last of our colleagues is here," Walsh said, gesturing to a fat orange-skinned man wearing a Hawaiian shirt, shorts, sandals, and a goatee. The orange must have been painted on, because there was no way any normal human being outside of New Jersey looked like that. "Meet Tito Makani, better known among the PVCC as Surfshack Tito."

"Hey there, little cuz." The fat man greeted Kevin warmly. "I know I probably look a whole lot out of place here, but don't worry. Like the ancient Hawaiians used to say: The volcano furthest from home burns the most brightly."

"I'm pretty sure you just made that up, Tito," commented Chris.

"Well, that's everyone here in Slumberland," continued Walsh. "We have many other operatives stationed in CWCville – Alec Benson Leary, that's one…let's see…Evan, Mao, Sean, Bryan Bash – he's our communications director, Jackie, Emily, Blanca Weiss – leader of the White Medallions, Robert Simmons…"

"And my own two executive officers, Clyde Cash and Jack Thaddeus," added Jason Kendrick Howell. "Together we form the Private Villa of Corrupted Citizens, or as you now know it, the PVCC. An organization dedicated to restoring truth and honesty to this city…a city so rife with corruption and stupidity that its citizens suffer and die every day from the whim of a man-child."

"We will be watching you," Vivian warned, "especially Bryan and I. If you stab us in the back, leak any information to Anderson, or commit any other slanderous activities…then run. Hide. Do everything you can to escape us. You'd better pull a goddamn Carmen Sandiego. It'll make it so much more satisfying when we finally catch you and put a bullet in your skull."

Kevin swallowed and shook his head. "No need for any of that. I am IN."

Vivian smiled. "Then welcome to the PVCC!"

The crowd of administrators applauded politely.

"Do you do this for all your new recruits?" Kevin asked, looking at Walsh in puzzlement.

"Most of them. We're a small operation with slow-growing numbers. Sometimes they come in groups." She nodded at Howell. "Remember the Russians last year?"

"All too well," growled the robed man. "Thank the gods Chris learned the language so fast."

"Hey, don't say I ever slacked off in the linguistics department." Chris laughed. "The only one I _can't_ learn is the butchered Spanish that Anderson keeps using when he's playing 'Ricardo.'"

"We're losing track of time," said Vivian irritably. "The Spikes of Blue are going out tomorrow night and we need to get Kevin into a squad ASAP."

Behind her, Max pumped his fist in a _Yes!_ gesture. Kevin guessed he had some relation to the Spikes of Blue.

"I'll take care of him," replied Howell. "Mary, you want in on this?"

"I've done my part," yawned Walsh. "Anyway, I'm taking a few squads out tomorrow morning for some recon and surveillance around the old PVCC campus. If we're going to make it into a new HQ, we need to know it's safe. Chances of running into any loyalists are pretty slim, so we should be fine. I'll leave Graduon with the operatives at Wilderness."

"Good." Howell turned to Kevin. "Shaw, get yourself cleaned up. You'll be assigned a squad first thing tomorrow morning. Kacey, you show him the facility."

"See you in a bit, honey!" Kacey gave Chris a quick kiss and hurried over to Kevin. "Come on, I'll give you the grand tour!"

**Half an hour later**

Kevin had never been so grateful for running water…_hot_ running water…in his life. The shower room was hardly YMCA-level, and it was apparently communal, but he did not care in the slightest. He could almost feel the heat and the soap blasting away a full year of homelessness, along with several layers of dirt, sweat, hair grease, and body odor. He couldn't remember exactly how long he remained standing under the warm jets, but when he finally snapped out of his hypnotized state and turned the nozzles off, he'd never felt cleaner.

Shaking his head to get the water out of his hair, he stepped over to a towel rack and wrapped a big fluffy white one around his waist. Kevin caught a glimpse of himself in a nearby mirror. It was amazing how much weight he'd lost in a year, even with the three meals a day that Soup Hotel #4 had provided. He almost looked like a starvation victim. Hopefully the PVCC could provide some better food options, but then again…

The water was teal.

Kevin stared down at his feet and blinked, hard.

The water remained teal.

Only then did Kevin recognize the sound of running water. Somebody else was taking a shower. Indeed, he could hear humming now, coming from a nearby aisle.

_What the fuck are they using, permanent marker?_

Gripping the towel with one hand, he took a few careful steps forward, ignoring the repeated _ABORT!_ command and the red alert siren that his brain was now sending at him. Peeking around the corner, he finally realized where the teal water had been coming from. On the other hand, its origin was probably one of the stranger things he'd seen in the past few years. And seeing as how he'd survived an apartment-sized golem falling on him just two months prior…that was saying a _lot_.

What appeared at first to be a human-sized Smurf in the midst of turning from blue to pink was actually a woman halfway covered from head to toe – except for her long dark brown hair - in what could only be teal-colored body paint. She looked a bit like that character…Mystique, in those two _X-Men _movies, except definitely not as intimidating. Oblivious to the newcomer, she was currently engaged in the long and arduous process of washing all of the stuff off.

Kevin had rarely been more in need of an immediate explanation in his life.

"Oh, hey!" The woman noticed him out of the corner of her eye. "I waved when I walked in, but I don't think you were paying attention. How's it going?"

"Paint," stuttered Kevin.

"Um…long story." She grabbed a bar of soap and a washcloth and began scrubbing at her face. "Too long for now. 'Scuse me, Mom."

Kevin retreated instantly, counting his blessings that this woman seemed to be a relatively calm…if a bit strange…person. He'd been dreading at least a scream. Hopefully he wouldn't run into her again in the near future.

"Why'd she call me 'Mom?'" he wondered aloud.

He dried off quickly and found a new set of clothes in the next room, inside an open locker labeled KEVIN SHAQ. Kevin made a mental note to see about getting that label replaced. This place still didn't feel like home away from home…but then again, where _was_ his home now?

The PVCC casual outfit consisted of a mishmash of secondhand clothes: a white T-shirt with the familiar red logo, a grey jacket, two pairs of boxers, frayed jeans, two pairs of socks, a pair of boots, and a leather belt. When he'd assembled his new look, Kevin checked himself in the cracked locker mirror. He liked it. Comfortable, practical, and it identified him without the need of a badge. He assumed everyone's outfit was a little different, given their lack of a steady clothing supply from the Shopping Center.

Kacey had told him that he'd be sleeping in the recruit quarters on a temporary cot by himself tonight, but Kevin honestly didn't mind a bit…not even after her half-joke/half-reality comment about there being a shortage of pillows in Slumberland. He simply retrieved a dry towel and rolled it up to use as a makeshift head rest. He no longer cared about bedroom accommodations. All he needed was a good few hours of sleep and then his new life at the PVCC could finally begin.

Within seconds of finding his cot, he had crashed into slumber.

-part split-

**March 18, 2004, CWCville slums, PVCC "Slumberland" headquarters**

Kevin awoke to a horribly familiar voice blaring in his ears.

"_HI-YO! Up and at 'em, dudes and dudettes! Time to rise, shine, and jam with all your favorite hits from our very own Mayor Chandler's Top 10! It's lookin' like an absolutely gorgeo-riffic spring day in good ol' CWCville, and we're gonna make sure you don't go anywhere without da power of ROCK! For KCWC, I'm your rockin' host, D to the J to the Jamsta Sonichu!"_

"_And I'm Lolisa Rosechu!"_ a female chu's voice squealed.

"_So sit back, and enjoy our numero uno pick of el dio, mis hombres mejores!"_ Jamsta's voice took on a horrendous Mexican accent as he vomited forth a stream of broken Chandler-Spanish. _"From the band that brought you the oh-so-popul…"_

_Click!_

_Oh, thank fucking God,_ thought Kevin with relief. He'd almost believed he was back in the soup hotel. Closing his eyes, he tried to drift back off to sleep.

"That's not going to work on me," a muffled male voice chided him. "_No one_ sleeps through Jamsta."

Kevin rolled over until he was facing the doorway, and was immediately greeted by yet another odd image. A man with a steel welder's mask over his face stood beside the now-silent radio, staring at him through the thin visor slit. The intruder wore a similar array of casual clothes – tan overcoat, black PVCC shirt, and grey cargo pants – but apart from his imposing headgear, he seemed like a fairly pleasant person.

"What time is it?" Kevin yawned.

"About 11:30. We let you sleep in this time. Don't get used to it, though. We're going to put your biological clock through some pretty strange stuff in these next few weeks, so get used to sleeping when we tell you to."

"All right, I can do that."

"We'll see. You're lucky most of us are here today. We've got a team of four out running surveillance on an EHPF patrol, but they'll be back later. You can introduce yourself then. For now, get I want you to meet the rest of your squad."

Kevin blinked. "Rest of the squad? I've already been assigned?"

"Exactly." The masked revolutionary stepped up to the cot and offered his hand. "Kevin Shaw, welcome to the Honey Badgers – the fiercest Jerkop squad in the entire PVCC."

The two shook hands. Kevin still wasn't exactly sure what to think. He'd anticipated some sort of formal meeting with the administrators, or something else along those lines.

"My name's Albert Ledger," the man introduced himself, "but I'd prefer it if you called me Al. _Just_ Al. I founded the Honey Badgers back in 2000, but don't think of me as your squad leader. That would be Steve. I'm just the guy who tells him what to do and how to do it."

Kevin nodded and stood up. He was already dressed, having worn his PVCC outfit to bed. As for Al…well, he was certainly modest, but Kevin highly doubted that a man who donned a welder's mask as casualwear was the kind of person to sit around at a desk all day giving orders.

"That's about it for my job." Al reached down and grabbed the towel off of the cot. "Come on. Steve'll show you our barracks and help you get settled. I've got some paperwork to do, anyway."

Kevin followed Al through the door. The bleak corridor outside was deserted save for a tall young man leaning against the opposite wall. He looked to be about 21 or 22 years old, with slicked-back blond hair and a short, roughly-trimmed mustache and beard. Two iPod headphones snaked down from his ears to the pocket of his white sweatshirt, and in the silence, Kevin could hear the faint familiar tune of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song."

"Steve." Al snapped his fingers. The blond man did not move. Al bunched up Kevin's towel-pillow and hurled it at him. Only when the fuzzy white cloth struck him in the chest did Steve realize his boss had returned.

"Hey, Al." Steve unplugged the headphones and bundled them up in one hand. Only when he looked up again did he finally seem to notice Kevin. "Well, well…"

"Play nice, Steve," the veteran Jerkop cautioned him in a firm voice. "The kid's been living in a soup hotel for the last year."

"Play nice?" Steve laughed coldly. "Last I checked, Honey Badgers didn't give a shit about playing nice. That's why we're still alive, isn't it?" He fixed Kevin with a pair of icy blue eyes. "Shaw, is it? Yeah, you'll make a nice addition to the chopping block. As far as I'm concerned, you're still a fuckin' loyalist until you get out there and kill me some chus."

Kevin held back the sharp retort that was brewing inside him, knowing full well that this Jerkop wasn't going to be one of the nicer ones he met.

"Each of my Honey Badgers," continued Steve, "owes me no fewer than one hundred and fifty Sparky headspikes." He smiled. "And I want my spikes. You want my respect; you'll get me _two_ hundred and fifty. Until that point, you're nothin' more than a goddamn chu larva to me. You want to quit? You're out. You cry? You're out. You ever tell me you can't do something I tell you to do? I'll shoot you. Kid, look at yourself. You're not cut out to be a Honey Badger. Hell, you're not even cut out to…"

"It's not working, Steve," Al chuckled. "Sorry. Maybe next time."

Steve's icy glare melted in an instant, reforming itself into a disappointed frown. "Oh, son of a BITCH. It was the voice, right? Right? I swear, I can never get the pitch down just the way I…"

"Wait, wait." Kevin drew back, confused. "Did you…were you just hazing me?"

"Tried and failed, but judging by the look on your face, I was almost there," explained the Jerkop. "Okay, be honest – am I an intimidating person?"

Kevin frowned. "Is this some kind of initiation ritual thing?"

"No," said Al. "Steve's just a little overzealous, that's all. Humor him."

"Okay…yeah, you were actually pretty convincing." Kevin looked back to Steve. "Until that hundred and fifty headspikes thing. Were you actually serious about that?"

"Feel free to go ahead and try." Steve shrugged. "Honestly, all I care about is whether you can shoot well enough to hit the broad side of a chu." He smiled warmly and held out a hand. "Steve Morrison."

"Kevin Shaw."

"I know. Al showed us your file earlier this morning."

"Well, the welcoming committee's in your hands now." Al nodded to Steve. "Be ready to debrief Zoey and the others when they get back. I'll be in the map room. As for you, Mr. Shaw…welcome to the team." He turned and strode away down the hall, finally disappearing around a corner.

Steve tugged at his mustache as he surveyed Kevin. "We're going to have to get you some combat training pretty soon, Shaw. You've never fired a gun before, have you?"

Kevin shook his head. "I've used a Taser, but that's about it."

"Yeah, I figured. Tasers don't do jack shit against Sparkies – might as well go after Al with a full bottle of Jack Daniels. Speaking of which, it's almost lunchtime, and my operatives have been waiting to meet you for a while now. I don't want to keep them waiting." Steve grinned at him. "Here, this way."

The two Jerkops set off down the corridor, toward a T-junction at the end.

"Each squad gets a single room for a barracks, plus two connecting dormitories," explained Steve as they turned left into a new hallway. "This place used to be an old factory…we don't know exactly what for…but all we had to do was move right in and clear out the hobos. Don't worry, we didn't hurt them. Walsh even managed to convince a few to join our cause."

Kevin wondered how Frank was doing back at the hotel. "I know a few homeless people…"

The Jerkop shot down his idea before he could even finish saying it. "That's not going to work. We learned that the hard way. Walsh thought the hobos in here would be good infiltrators, but some of them just stuffed their pockets with food and ran, and the rest all either got captured or killed by loyalists in less than three months. Old Mike was the last one…he was with Blanca's squad when we first started out. He was a good man, but he was also a fuckin' moron. Ran right up to a Sonichu and tried to strangle it with a bike chain."

Steve paused. "I'm sorry - I'm just rambling now. That's what happens when you spend four years cooped up with the same group of people every single day. We don't get very many R&R days, and I've got a bounty on my head, so going out in public is out of the question for me."

"Bounty? What for?"

"Being a slanderous troll, according to Chandler."

"You mean, Anderson?"

"Chandler, Anderson, same shitty person." Steve frowned. "Anyway, I used to write for the_ Forum_, the PVCC school newspaper. August 1998 rolls around, Walsh disappears, and suddenly there's no school to write about anymore. So I go to the _CWCville Times_, the editor fuckin' loves my portfolio, and it looks like I'm going to get the job. But then along comes the mayor and that piss-stained electric pig of his with an 'official rejection notice.' Bam. No more _Times_ for old Steve." He sighed and shoved his hands back into his sweatshirt. "After that, I was a bit desperate. I started writing all these articles for underground political journals, criticizing Chandler's policies and stuff. Then Magi-Chan and the goddamn Inquisition got ahold of a few issues and suddenly I'm on the black list. No mail, house arrest, you name it, they threw it at me. Finally Jason Kendrick Howell bailed me out of there…with a Humvee and a battering ram."

Steve glanced ahead and stopped. "Oh look, we're here."

Kevin had been listening so intently that he nearly walked right into the wall. Looking up, he could see a single wooden door with a large hand-drawn sign hanging above it. Written in large black and white block letters was the phrase:

**HONEY BADGERS**

**Founder: Albert "The Legend" Ledger**

**Squad Leader: Steven Morrison**

**DO NOT TOUCH SUGAR IF YOU VALUE YOUR LIFE**

Kevin was about to ask why on earth Steve was so restrictive concerning the squad's sugar supply, but the Jerkop had already stepped forward and opened the door.

The Honey Badgers' barracks had once been a large office, or perhaps a meeting room of some sort. The white plaster walls were heavily decorated with movie posters and propaganda leaflets, as well as a large notice board full of tacks and random paper scraps. On one wall hung a half-erased whiteboard with a variety of colored markers. The only light in the room came from a line of high privacy windows on the side opposite the doorway, as well as a pair of halogen lamps hanging from the ceiling.

The Jerkop squad was also very well supplied in terms of furniture. In what Kevin could only assume was the living room stood several frayed chairs and a big sofa, all clustered around a makeshift brick fireplace. A chimney made of bent aluminum sheets ran from the top of the fireplace to the ceiling, allowing the smoke to vent outside. To the right of these were a large card table and some wooden chairs.

And scattered throughout the room were five Jerkops, three women and two men. Apart from one middle-aged man, most of the operatives looked to be around the same age – late teens through their late 20s. They all wore the same logo on their T-shirts, but none wore the exact same outfit as each other. _Good. That'll make it easier to learn their names quickly._

"Okay then, let's get started." Steve led his newest operative forward to the notice board, where a young black woman in a grey trench coat stood staring intently at a large piece of paper tacked in the middle. "Amanda Taylor, Kevin Shaw."

"Hi, Kevin. Good to have you on our team." Amanda gave him a quick handshake, then turned to Steve. Her curly black hair bounced as she moved. "Hey Steve, I thought you said you were switchin' me out for Serge yesterday."

"I did. Let me see that…" Steve gently pushed her out of the way, examined the paper, then grabbed a marker. "Good spotting." He crossed out a name on the roster. "That's better."

"Thanks."

"What is problem with Serge?" a deep, brutish voice with a heavy Russian accent sounded behind them. Kevin turned to see a huge, heavily-muscled man with short black hair and a face full of rough stubble towering over him. One of his ears had been shredded, but it was impossible to tell how exactly that had happened.

"No problem - just a typo. Serge, this is Kevin Shaw. Kevin, Serge Khitrovo."

"Is pleasure," growled Serge, and nearly pulled Kevin's arm clean off as they shook hands. "Always good to see new face for killing tiny shock-pigs."

"Chus, Serge," Amanda corrected the massive Russian.

"Tiny chus." Serge's eyes narrowed as he examined Kevin. "No good for Serge to fight. Better for tiny Kevin." He walked away, chuckling.

"Yeah…he's like that with anyone smaller than him," explained Amanda. "Don't try talkin' with him outside of missions – all he does is eat and sleep in the bus." She looked over her shoulder. "Yo, Jexis! Come meet the new guy!"

A teenage girl with a sleek silver-blond ponytail and wearing what appeared to be a white doctor's coat, extracted herself from the pages of a thick medical textbook and leapt up from the sofa. A tiny decorated key with a heart insignia dangled from a thin chain around her neck, and Kevin noticed she was one of the only Jerkops who wore glasses.

"Hi!" she said cheerfully.

"Hey." He shook her hand. "I'm Kevin. You probably already knew that, right?"

"Yeah, I spent the morning putting together some reference sheets about you. Blood type, hospitalization history, old injuries…oh yeah, and I got these for your hands." The girl reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a small roll of white cloth strips. "Just wrap 'em up before you go out. No more glass problems, plus it'll keep 'em safe from rough surfaces."

"Thanks!" Kevin accepted the hand wrappings gratefully.

"No problem! I'm Jexis, the squad medic. They all call me Jexis the Cadet, though."

"Yeah, 'cause you're goddamn seventeen." Amanda rolled her eyes and looked at Kevin with a pitiful expression. "Damn girl should be in school, not runnin' 'round with Jerkops. Steve keeps her for the healin' work, though."

"What can I say?" Steve muttered in a suggestive tone. "I like 'em young."

"Oh, shut up," retorted Jexis, and gave her squad leader a light punch on the arm.

"And this lovely lady here," continued Steve, ignoring the blow and guiding Kevin over to the fireplace, "is our very own true-blue gourmet chef. Pardon the pun, Kuri."

"Nuhrr wuhhrrurs, Stuhvh."

A young woman with long, dark brown hair and blue eyes sat cross-legged in front of the fireplace, alternately cranking a rotisserie spit and taking huge bites out of something that looked like a well-cooked slice of pork roast. She wore a pair of blue jeans with faint reddish stains on the knees, a comfy-looking black hooded sweatshirt with the red PVCC logo in front and a rainbow band on her right sleeve, and probably strangest of all: a black hairband with two large shiny stone horns curving down the back of her head.

Kevin couldn't help but wonder if he'd ever seen her before. She looked kind of familiar…

"Allow me to introduce Kuri Tatsuno: squad cook, interrogator, and all-around sneak." Steve grinned as the delicious smell of roast meat reached his nose. "Kuri, I think you already…"

"We've met," Kuri said nonchalantly, and began tearing another greasy morsel off with her teeth.

Kevin's stomach felt like it had dropped out of him and was now well on its way toward the center of the earth. Now it all made sense. That girl he'd walked in on last night…the one covered in teal paint…

"That was you?" he somehow managed to ask.

Kuri nodded and kept chewing.

"I sense awkwardness," commented Steve. "Kuri, what _is_ that?"

"Fhrrrll. Hughrr brurght urt urn-" Kuri swallowed a huge mouthful of food, burped politely, and wiped her mouth on a napkin. "Excuse me. Feral. Sugar brought it in last night. I tried slow-cooking this one, but the meat's still a bit gamey. She's in stage five, maybe six at most. A bit tough, but not too bad with some barbecue sauce."

"You enjoy that, then. Save me a few bites." Steve crossed the room to the card table, where the middle-aged Hispanic man sat writing a letter. "Nick? This is our new operative, Kevin Shaw. Kevin, meet Nick Martinez."

Nick looked up. "So you're the guy who got his hands all cut up, eh? You're lucky to be alive, amigo."

"Nick's our sniper," explained Steve. "He's one of the only guys here who knows how to put down adult chus without them even knowing it. Cut his teeth fighting Mexican drug cartels before he moved here."

"This isn't much different, actually," muttered Nick. "Now leave me alone, I gotta finish this letter to Joshua."

Kevin and Steve moved to the back of the room and approached a table with a large covered rectangular cage.

"We've got four other operatives out right now, so I might as well introduce you to the last one here while we wait." Steve reached out, grabbed the white cloth cover, and yanked it up off the cage.

"GrrrrAAARRRRRHHHH!"

Something resembling a furry black-and-white tornado lunged at the bars, slashing and leaping and growling with such ferocity that Kevin almost thought the creature might tear right through the cage and start biting his face off.

"Kuri!" shouted Steve. A chunk of meat spun through the air and was neatly intercepted by the squad leader. Steve dropped the greasy treat in through the ceiling bars, chuckling as the furious blur snapped it up before it even touched the ground. After what seemed like five minutes of running back and forth, the animal stopped and began gnawing at the meat. It was about two feet long, with a single white stripe running down its back and a wicked set of teeth that looked like they belonged in the mouth of something much less cute.

"Meet the squad mascot," Steve said with a grin. "Our very own honey badger, Sugarplum Fury."

Kevin had never even seen a picture of a honey badger before, but Sugarplum Fury was easily the most terrifying small fuzzy mammal he'd ever encountered in his life. She'd torn the meat to ribbons, and was now attacking the shredded remains with a berserk ferocity unmatched by any animal her size. Furthermore, she looked like the mutated offspring of a skunk and a wolverine…except ten times as angry.

"She'll warm up to you in a few weeks," Amanda shouted from across the room. "Just don't try to pet her. Serge did his first day."

_Well, that explains the ear_.

Sugar looked up and growled at him again, then resumed her meal. Steve placed the cover back onto her cage.

"So now what?" asked Kevin.

Steve's amiable smile vanished. "Practice."

**One hour later, Slumberland training field**

Kevin silently vowed to never assume anything about anyone ever again. For all his kind words, his warm gestures, and his seemingly friendly attitude inside the barracks…Steve had become a _very_ different person once he'd taken Kevin outside.

For the last fifty minutes or so, the veteran Jerkop had set his new recruit on a grueling series of rapid-fire exercises through the graveyard of rusty gym equipment that now served as Slumberland's training field. Push-ups, curls, running back and forth, and various climbing activities - all of these tasks soon had Kevin panting and sweating harder than Christian Weston Chandler himself. Steve rarely allowed any breaks or rest periods, though he did provide a bottle of ice water to ward off the hot midday sun. A dull ache had spread across the right side of Kevin's abdomen, and his head throbbed violently as he fought to keep his arms from turning to water and collapsing beneath him.

"Ten more push-ups, then stop," ordered Steve. There was not a shred of sympathy or compassion in his voice.

Kevin clenched his teeth and began. The ground fell away again and again. With every push, the black fog in the edges of his eyes crept further and further inward. He was rapidly losing focus…drifting into some kind of catatonic state. Thank God Steve hadn't told him to keep count.

"Nine…ten. Stop."

The fatigued Jerkop collapsed, heaving and gasping for breath. He was no longer in control of his own limbs. His arms felt as if they had turned into some kind of useless fleshy stubs that hung off of his shoulders like limp meaty noodles.

"Good," growled Steve. "Now get up."

Wincing with pain, Kevin tried to lift his aching torso off the grass, but to no avail. Steve did not insult or berate him, but merely watched as his helpless student flopped around like a dying sea creature.

"I got a fish," the veteran Jerkop sang softly, yet mockingly. "Would you like to make a wish? I got a fish, would you like to make a wish? I got a fiiiiiish."

Mustering what little strength he had left and supporting it with a healthy dose of anger, Kevin reared backward and found himself kneeling on the grass before Steve as if they were characters in an old samurai movie. Steve glanced down at him and nodded.

"In the time it took you to get back up, your squadmates have all been captured, put on trial, convicted of treason, and executed by the Chaotic Combo," he informed Kevin. "And now you get to tell me, Al, and the entire administration what exactly you were doing while your friends were dying all around you. Tell me, what _were _you doing?"

Kevin groaned and pressed the cool water bottle to his side. "I was…I was…crashing into slumber."

"Because of the stress, right?" The Jerkop's voice held no anger, but was still dangerously soft. "'Stress hinders the emotions and physical abilities as swiftly as a bullet.' Do you know who said that?"

"P…Patton? Eisenhower?"

"Christian Weston Chandler." The corner of Steve's mouth twitched into a cold smile. "Our enemy. _Your_ enemy. Would you live and fight by the philosophy of your enemy, Shaw?"

"No," growled Kevin.

"Then _prove it_," Steve hissed in his ear. "Ten more. No more crashing, or we do this again and again until you get it right."

Again and again, the pain returned. Again and again, Kevin tried his best to swallow it, but when the next "ten" came, he still couldn't pull himself upright fast enough to satisfy his squad leader. Steve ordered him to complete a further ten push-ups. Then another. By the time he finally collapsed and nearly blacked out, he had gone a full forty push-ups over his limit.

Steve knelt beside his prone comrade, staring into Kevin's eyes with that strange icy glare. "What do you feel now?" he asked.

The exhausted recruit coughed up a string of saliva. "Tired."

"Stress."

Kevin nearly screamed in anger, but all that came out of his throat was a choked little squeak.

"Now what do you feel?"

"Ang…an…angry!"

"Stress," repeated Steve.

"God…damn…you…" spat Kevin. "Let…me…stop…"

Steve paused, then handed over a full water bottle. "Good. You can rest now."

Kevin was too tired to ask questions. He grabbed the bottle in limp fingers and squeezed all of its contents into his mouth and over his sweat-drenched face. Above him, Steve quietly flipped through the pages of the book he'd been reading, _Wednesday's Child_.

After what seemed like an hour, Kevin finally pulled himself back up into a sitting position. Steve folded a page corner down and returned his attention to the recruit.

"That feeling…that last stretch of darkness and pain before the slumber," he said solemnly. "_That_ isn't stress. We all feel that…when we've reached our final, absolute limit. Beyond that lies the black, and beyond that, the void." Steve extended a hand. "And now that you've seen the edge, now that you know what stress truly is, you can finally begin to overcome it."

Kevin grasped his squad leader's hand and felt himself hauled to his feet. Through bleary eyes, he saw Steve retrieve something from inside the gym bag on his shoulder.

"That's endurance over with for today." The Jerkop passed him a bundle of leather. "Now we'll see just how well you use a knife. Guns are for another day."

Unfolding the bundle, Kevin realized what he was holding. George's hunting knife now rested in a fine military-grade sheath, attached to a belt with grenade loops, an empty pistol holster, and a small PVCC logo engraved on the brass buckle.

Steve led him over to a row of wooden scarecrows, all cut into the shapes of Sonichus and Rosechus. Each was perforated with a myriad of tiny holes. "Kill one."

The command seemed simple enough. Kevin drew his knife slowly and examined the steel blade. It had been cleaned and sharpened until only the slightest traces of rust remained, but it was clearly still the same weapon George had given him.

Focusing his attention on the nearest Rosechu target, he spun the knife around in his hand and lunged. The blade slashed toward the grotesque wooden face with enough force to cleave it in half…

_SSSSST!_

Kevin yelled in surprise as a jet of ice-cold water struck him full in the face. His frenzied swing missed entirely. Looking back at Steve in confusion and annoyance, he noticed that the Jerkop was smiling.

"You've got to be faster than that if you want to kill a chu," said Steve. "Even the females are still lightning-quick."

Raising the knife, Kevin tried a sudden, unexpected lunge. The spray caught him in the face again. Frustrated, he ducked away and thrust at the Rosechu target's heart. Once more he missed, and once more he ended up with a splash of cold water running down his forehead.

"Try another one," suggested Steve.

Kevin walked down the line and made as if to target another Rosechu, then whirled and aimed a deadly slash at the adjacent Sonichu. This time, two jets of water struck him in the face and side.

The veteran Jerkop laughed. "One at a time, Shaw. Don't get greedy – no one goes up against two chus with just a knife and walks away in one piece."

Kevin's mind raced furiously. There was obviously some kind of mechanized pressure system inside the target, perhaps controlled by an observing technician…or Steve himself. He glanced back. No, Steve was reading his book.

Suddenly, he had an idea. Strolling casually up to the Sonichu target, he turned around inconspicuously, then spun around and swung the knife.

_SSSSST!_

"OH, COME ON!" shouted Kevin as the icy spray drenched his arm and shoulder.

"You're not thinking outside of the box," hinted Steve, flipping a page without glancing up.

"What's left? I tried everything! They're just too fucking fast!"

"They were engineered from the DNA of the fastest thing alive. Maybe you need to find some way of increasing your speed."

Kevin laughed humorlessly. "What am I supposed to do, find myself a medallion and turn into…into Kevi-shaw Sonichu or some shit like that? I just can't hit the damn things!"

Steve sighed and closed his book. "No, you can hit them. They just hit you first." He stood up, placed _Wednesday's Child_ into his gym bag, and withdrew a flat curved black object. "So what do you do when you yourself can't strike first?" He unbuckled a leather strap from the object, grasped the protruding handle, and drew a 16-inch kukri from its sheath. The Nepalese knife was bizarrely beautiful, a sleek black cross between a machete and a scimitar, with what looked like the chopping power of an axe.

Before Kevin could ask the Jerkop what he'd meant, Steve hurled the massive knife straight forward in a powerful piston throw. As the jet of water sprayed forward, he leapt to the side, just as the tip of the kukri buried itself in the Sonichu's wooden throat.

_Thunk!_

Steve walked over to the target and pulled the knife free. Wiping the droplets of water off on his pants, he slid it back into its sheath and buckled the whole thing shut.

"You strike from where they can't hit you as easily," he finished, and dropped the kukri into his gym bag. "We're done for today. Hit the showers and get back to the barracks by 1:30 for the evening plan." He swung the bag over his shoulder and walked away.

Kevin's second visit to the shower room was somewhat less surprising than the first, mostly because Kuri wasn't there washing off a load of paint. He finished quickly and discovered another set of clean clothes in his locker. He had no idea what they'd done with his hobo outfit, but he assumed it was either somewhere at the bottom of a trash can or floating on the breeze as a cloud of ashes. Both were just as satisfying to him.

He really needed to get that nameplate fixed. Someone had cut out and taped a picture of Shaquille O'Neal to the front of his locker.

When he finally found his way back to the Honey Badgers' barracks, the room sounded slightly more active than it had when he'd left it. Opening the door, he was greeted by the sight of a good eight Jerkops standing and sitting around the living room area, all talking excitedly to one another. Steve and Al were absent. _Guess the other four got back alive._ He stepped inside.

The door slammed shut with a loud _bang_. Instantly, all chatter ceased, and the Jerkops turned their attention to him.

"Hey," said Kevin calmly, not wanting to make a scene.

"Well, son of a bitch," laughed one of the new arrivals – a young man with short red hair. "Look who just stepped out of hell."

Kevin drew in a short, surprised breath. Out of all the people in CWCville, he'd landed in the exact same Jerkop squad as Jake Linneman.

"We've all been to hell and back, Jake," another familiar voice spoke up. "All that matters right now is the fact that he made it through in one piece."

Kevin turned, scarcely able to believe what he was seeing and hearing. _Matt too?_ Indeed, Matthew Clark - the man who'd once been his absolute best friend in CWCville – now stood smiling in the midst of his new teammates.

"And that's not all," continued Jake. "Look behind you and see who we picked up off the street a few months ago."

Before Kevin could turn around, he was nearly knocked to the floor as someone enveloped him in a fierce bear hug. A flash of brown hair whipped across his face. For a brief moment, he thought it might have been Kel…but no. It was even better.

"ALLIE!" he shouted, and instantly returned the hug. Impossibly, unbelievably, unimaginably, the girl from the Burger King had found her way to the PVCC. After what seemed like five minutes, he finally let go and stepped back to look at his long-lost friend.

Allie had undergone quite a few changes in the six (or three) years since the attack on the Shopping Center. Her eyes no longer held their innocent spark, and she seemed to have lost what little uncertainty he'd seen her display back when he was bleeding out on the floor with glass embedded in his hands. Most obvious of all, however, was the raw shiny patch of burned skin that ran down the left side of her face, across her eye and down to the bottom of her cheek.

"What…what happened?" asked Kevin, still stunned by this sudden turn of events.

"It doesn't matter now!" Allie's smile could have lit up a room. "Kevin, I had no idea where you were! Six years…they said you moved into a soup hotel! We've got so much to tell you!"

"Okay, Parker, save the stories for later," a new voice ordered from next to the whiteboard. Kevin turned to see a tall, dark-haired woman addressing the Jerkops. A single long braid was draped over her shoulder. "Shaw, I'm Zoey Francesca, Steve's secondary team leader. I know you're just getting acquainted with us, but listen up – this is important."

Kevin and Allie obediently stepped over to the sofa and sat down. Kuri edged over to let them in.

"Right," said Zoey. "Now that we're all here, I've got an announcement to read. It was issued earlier today, from high command to all Jerkop squads in the inner city." She cleared her throat and began to read.

_To the brave men and women of the Private Villa of Corrupted Citizens resistance initiative,_

_At precisely 931 hours today, the PVCC supreme commander Mary Lee Walsh and her chosen two Jerkop squads based in Wilderness - the Deathbreakers and the Naïvigators – were in the process of surveying and performing reconnaissance on the ruins of PVCC (college) when the group was suddenly and unavoidably engaged by Christian Weston Chandler in the form of Chris-Chan Sonichu. Though Walsh lacked the additional strength generated by Count Graduon, she managed to draw Chandler away from her squads and allowed an emergency extraction to commence. No casualties have been reported. Walsh located and took advantage of a weak spot in Chandler's medallion – forcing him back to human form._

_Before Walsh had the chance to end the conflict for good, loyalist backup arrived in the form of the original Sonichu, who engaged her long enough for Chandler to recover and hit her with a Curse-ye-ha-me-ha, enhanced by Sonichu's thunder attack. Walsh suffered many severe injuries and has been confined to the medical facility at Wilderness. In the meantime, I am assuming temporary command of all PVCC activities until Walsh makes a safe and full recovery. As usual, DISREGARD the upcoming propaganda known as Sub-Episode 3 of the "Sonichu" comic book, Chandler's dramatization of today's events. It portrays Walsh as a stereotypical witch with a cauldron, makes no mention of the Jerkop squads, and worst of all, is also terribly drawn._

_In the wake of an emergency administrative meeting, we have passed a unanimous vote to move forward from surveillance to provocation. A campaign codenamed Operation Rift will commence at precisely 2400 hours on March 22, 2004. Our goal is to force the adult Navitaricii into a state of panic and confusion by dealing decisive blows to their offspring. Until then, all active Jerkop squad leaders should immediately begin training their operatives in the methods of widespread larval extermination. Further instructions will follow as the operation progresses._

_Good hunting,_

_-Jason Kendrick Howell_

_Acting Supreme Commander, Private Villa of Corrupted Citizens_

Kuri let out a squeal of delight at the words "larval extermination." Allie, Matt, and Serge glanced at her confusedly. Kevin didn't even know what Howell's letter was referring to.

"Al and Steve are putting together a training schedule as we speak," Zoey continued. "Until they finish, we're to continue as usual. I'll take the night patrol out at 6:30, but for now, I'm hitting the sack. I suggest the rest of you prepare yourselves for Operation Rift. Nick, Kuri, you're in charge of training Sugar."

The two "volunteers" shot a quick look at each other. Kevin could almost hear the silent _Oh, crap_ that passed between them.

"And Kevin, Steve says you'll be starting active duty on the 22nd," finished the Jerkop. "Before then, I'll be in charge of briefing you on firearms use and getting some combat gear fitted for you at the armory. Everyone else…sweet dreams." Without another word, Zoey spun around and headed for her bunk.

When she'd gone, Kevin glanced around the room at Matt, Jake, and Allie.

"Okay, then." A smile grew at the edge of his mouth. "Who wants to go first and tell me how they survived the last six years?"


	7. Sub Episode 1

**Sub-Episode 1:**

"**Steve Morrison's Life-Shares"**

* * *

**Life-Share 1:**

**Steve Morrison and the Honey Badgers in "Heart Level Zero"**

**October 7, 2003, CWCville east side, East Sun Cafe**

"Okay, so then…get this…then I said, 'No, I'm going to finish this thing all by myself, you know?" Al laughed dazedly and sipped at his glass. "Is…it's some kinda…field guide to killing the little bastards, am I right? I mean, you…y'guys know wha…"

Zoey narrowed her eyes at him from across the table. "Al, just how much did you 'sample' before we left?"

"Ah, leave him alone, Zo," chuckled Steve, who by now was having minor difficulties telling the difference between the tabletop and his plate of crab rangoon, spareribs, and General Tso's. So far, he'd managed to paint most of the woodwork in sweet-and-sour sauce. "Al, listen…the thing, it's…it's gotta be finished, you know, for…publicity and all. Hell, I'll write the rest if you'll let me. You taught me everyth…hey Kuri, you gonna eat that eggroll?"

"Go nuts." Kuri speared the object of Steve's desire on a single chopstick and passed it over to his plate. "Guys, listen, lay off the booze. We're on assignment here."

"Relax, Jexis has us covered, right?"

"Huh?" The medic glanced up from the enormous pile of pork lo mein she'd been demolishing.

"Exactly." Steve finally managed to snare a piece of chicken between his chopsticks. "What y'need to do, Kuri, is to lighten up. Eat something that…isn't a feral for once. I swear, you're addicted to those things. D'you even knows how m…how much fat there is in a single…ow! Ow! Hey!" The squad leader covered his face as a hail of incoming fortune cookies pelted him. "All right, all right, I never called you fat! Cease and desist! AAGH!"

Jexis rolled her eyes and resumed vacuuming up her noodles.

"So tell us again why you're having us do surveillance from inside a Chinese restaurant, right out in the open where anyone can identify us?" asked Jake.

"Sometimes you just…gotta go with the ways of fate," Al murmured through a haze of rice wine and Bailey's. "That, and the buffet was half price today. This…this whole Sweetheart from the Ground-Up event's makin' 'em all go…go…" The Legend's voice trailed off. So had his train of thought.

"It's just…horrific." Zoey's eyes narrowed in cold anger. "That fat disgusting bastard. Mary'd better be sure this thing's gonna work, 'cause if not, I'll fuckin' do it myself."

Steve pointed a chopstick at his second-in-command and raised an eyebrow. "Bad idea, Zo. Fools might rush in, but complete idiots rush in and get captured by a psychotic man-child who would love nothing less than to…"

Kuri reached across, grabbed the eggroll, and stuffed it right into Steve's mouth. "We're trying to eat here too, you know."

"Nnnsubuhrdunsshnnhnhuhn…" The Jerkop quickly chewed and swallowed the delicious fried wrap. "Insubordination in the line of duty, plus assaulting a senior officer. Ten lashes. Jexis?"

The medic shrugged and grabbed a long noodle from her plate, cracking it in her fingers like a whip. "Sorry, Kuri. Orders."

_Whap! Whap! Whap!_

"HEY!"

"Uh oh." Zoey motioned to the front of the restaurant. "Cut the chatter, we got company."

"Bring 'em on. More's the merrier…" slurred Al. "Hey, get Helen back here, will you Jake?"

Jake hesitated, then began waving to their hostess. Walking through the front door was a group of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon – two Sonichus and a Rosechu. All were of the generic yellow-and-pink males looked to be EHPF officers, judging by their flak jackets, badges, portable radios, and combat boots.

And they were heading straight for the Honey Badgers' booth.

Helen arrived at last. A nervous smile spread across her face as soon as she noticed her three new customers.

"With you in a moment," she called out in heavily Chinese-accented English. "Can I get more drink for you, Mister Albert?"

"Another bottle would be just great, Helen." Al suppressed a hiccup. "'Scuse me. Steve, didn't you need a knife?"

"What? Oh yeah, I'm just having a problem cutting these ribs. They're a bit tough."

Helen smiled. "I'm very sorry - I tell them, cook the ribs more next time. So I get you better knife, and more wine for you, Mister Albert."

"Thank you, Helen." Al turned back to his teammates as the three chus drew closer. "Everyone stay cool. Steve and I will handle this."

Zoey frowned. "Are you sure you…"

"Of course I'm not," replied Al. "I'm halfway to a coma right now and Steve…well, he looks like he's falling asleep. Cover us if it doesn't work out."

"Am not sleepy." Steve let out a loud yawn and covered his mouth.

The two EHPF officers stopped in front of the booth and surveyed its occupants with barely-concealed distaste. Behind them, the Rosechu let out a vapid giggle, just as she'd been bred to do in situations like these. After two bites of broccoli here, she'd go for a long shopping spree at the nearby Target and then maybe one of these handsome Sonichus might want to take her home to administer a few well-earned fuzzy-wuzzies. Not both at once, though. That would be too homo.

"I.D." growled the foremost Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, and held out a gloved hand.

"Hey, we're eating," grunted Al. At this stage of his intoxication, it was amazing he could string words together, let alone argue with the chus. "Piss off, spiky. I'm not even halfway drunk."

"You're disobeying the law of our generous Mayor," the other officer answered smugly. "Identify yourselves, or we will treat y'all as dirty, scheming trolls."

"Hang on…" The first Sonichu examined Zoey, then pointed to Jexis. "You. Blondie. How old are you?"

Jexis put on her best "schoolgirl" voice. "I'm fourteen, mister. Please don't tell my Daddy I'm out with strangers."

"Shut it. You're too young anyway. And you're over the limit," the chu said dismissively to Zoey. He turned to Kuri. "But you…you're comin' with us. All boyfriend-free girls in the district who fit the Mayor's criteria must report to…"

"I'm her boyfriend, asswipe," growled Steve, and grabbed her hand. "Back off."

Kuri played right along with the ruse and gave her squad leader a little hug. Jerkops always looked after each other during the Sweetheart from the Ground-Up selections, and right now, she was in serious danger.

"Nope. Not buyin' it," chuckled the Sonichu. He reached out and tapped the operative's hairband. "Come on, horny, let's go. Y'all remember to stay straight. Zed, call processing and tell 'em we got a…"

"HEY!" Al whirled around. "Lissen, forgive my daughter's fiancée, he an' I don't usually get along, but I'll vouch for 'im. He treats my lil' princess well, he does…"

"I said, _come on_." The EHPF officer grabbed Kuri by her arm.

"Hey, let's all have another glass first," Jake suggested as Helen arrived bearing a fresh bottle of rice wine for Al and a serrated knife for Steve.

"I get what you ask for, Mister Albert and Steve," the hostess announced, placing her tray on the table. She turned to the chus. "Would you gentlemen and lady like table or booth?"

"Fuck off, you slanty-eyed chink bitch," growled the second Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

"Thanks, Helen." Without another word, Al seized the wine bottle from the tray and smashed it as hard as he could into Zed's face.

_CRACK!_

"AAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGGHHHHHH!" screamed the Sonichu as the bottle shattered, breaking his nose and jaw in one blow. Blood, rice wine, and pieces of dislodged teeth flew in all directions from the point of impact, splashing and scattering across the table and carpet. Shards of jagged glass slashed through Zed's face in a dozen places, tearing one cheek into a mess of fleshy ribbons. A fierce blow from the Jerkop leader's padded elbow hammered the sharp fragments in even further, prompting a fresh roar of agony from the lacerated chu.

Wasting no time, Al drew back the broken chunk of glass and lunged forward, burying the jagged edges deep into his victim's throat. The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon fell with a choking gurgle, his life spraying out all over the restaurant, his fellow officer, and the screaming Rosechu.

"Eat it, fucker," spat the Legend.

"ZED!" bellowed the other Sonichu, but before it could even warm up a charge, Steve had already leapt to his feet. Snatching up the serrated knife in one hand, he plunged the blade right through the EHPF officer's eyeball and into the frontal lobe of its brain. With his other hand, the Jerkop grabbed the chu around its throat and began sawing back and forth ferociously, twisting the knife around until he'd sliced a vertical incision straight through the Sonichu's skull. When he was finished, there wasn't much left of the right side of its brain except a handful of grey slimy scraps of meat.

"Zed's dead, Sparky," Steve hissed, and disgustedly kicked the convulsing chu to the floor. Kuri leaned down and stabbed it in the other eye with a chopstick, just in case.

"EEEEEEEEEEEE!" shrieked the Rosechu, and turned to run for the door. Jake's outstretched fist was already waiting for her.

_WHAM!_ The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon fell poleaxed, silently screaming in pain as she clutched her broken nose. Zoey quickly picked the struggling chu up, pinned her arms behind her back, and turned to the now-terrified Helen.

"My commanding officer would like to know - could we borrow your deep-fryer for a few minutes?" asked Steve as he turned back to his General Tso's. "Bring us the check, too."

Al chuckled softly and reached under the table for his mask. "I _love_ this job."

**Fifteen minutes later, CWCville east side, Anne Boleyn Memorial Plaza**

"_Honey Badger Lead One, Slumberland Control. We just got a report of something going down in a Chinese res…"_

"Yeah, that was us, Slumberland," Al replied into his radio between sips of Smirnoff. "Couple of Sparkers got a little too curious. Don't worry, we covered our tracks. Over."

"_Goddamn it, Ledger, please tell me you didn't pull another microwave stunt. The guys who run Ricardo's still aren't answering our calls, over."_

"Negative on the microwave. We're in position, and I've got two teams on the ground: Morrison's and Francesca's. Tatsuno's with me, over."

"_Good. Once Walsh starts the diversion, have your Jerkops take down the fourth truck. We've already got the other teams lined up, and extraction is standing by. Remember, no collateral kills. Over."_

Al shook his head in disgust. "You don't have to say that twice. Out." He clipped the radio to his belt. "Okay Kuri, draw me a picture."

Over on the fire escape, the young woman swept her binoculars back and forth across the crowded plaza, taking in the entire appalling sight. Chandler's huge neon Attraction Sign hung suspended from a construction crane at the north corner behind a large elevated presentation stage, swaying and flashing in the air as it displayed the mayor's sickening Sweetheart from the Ground-Up requirements for all to see.

**21 AND SINGLE WHITE MALE**

**-Shy –Smart –Young at Heart –Computer skilled**

**-Humorous –A great thinker and go-getter –"Natural salesperson" –Enjoys good parts of life**

**-Diplomatic –Friendly –Loves his family –Peaceful –Very creative –He's lonely**

…**Seeking a CUTE 18-21 SINGLE FEMALE COMPANION**

***18-21 years of age *Does not already have a boyfriend *Single**

**-Average to Slender Weight/Body Type –White –Lives in CWCville area**

**-Does NOT Smoke or Drink Alcohol –Happy, Positive Personality**

**-Average/High Income –Drives a vehicle**

**If any MEN read this huge sign…**

**MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS!**

**(And to all men with girlfriends, except marrieds and blacks, go jump off a cliff)**

**Have a nice day.**

"Are you kidding me?" Kuri made a noise somewhere between a sigh of despair and a cat being strangled. "And Mary said he wore a smaller version of that thing around his neck in college? No wonder he's still a virgin."

"Virgin with _rage_," Al corrected her. "And keep in mind - that rage is why we're here today. We're finally going to put a stop to this horrible event."

"What do they…what do they even _do_ with the women who fit the criteria?" asked Kuri with a shudder of revulsion. She reached up and adjusted her horned hairband – something she only did whenever she was anxious or uncertain.

"We've heard rumors, but I've never seen the process myself," explained Al. "I don't think Chandler rapes them – say what you will about the man, but he hasn't fallen quite that far…yet. Shed a tear for Steve and the others if you must, though." The Legend downed another mouthful of vodka and swirled it around in his mouth. He smiled with barely-concealed pity. "If Chandler's been doing what I think he's been doing, they're gonna need some serious brain bleach after we're done here."

"'Zed's dead, Sparky?'" scoffed Jexis as she pushed her way through the tightly-packed crowd toward the central stage where Chandler or one of his cronies would be making their address. "Was 'Hasta la vista, Sparky?' taken already? Geez, at least _try_ and make up your own lines."

"Hey, the opportunity presented itself, and I made the most of it. How many more times do you think I'm ever gonna have the chance to kill another Zed?" Steve held up his thumb and forefinger in a circle. "Come on, admit it. You were at least a _little_ impressed."

"Okay, fine, that was actually pretty awesome," conceded the teenager. "Al's was better, though."

"No argument here." Steve hiked up the straps of his backpack and shuddered. "That sound it made when he…ugh. I still don't get why Kuri turned down a perfectly good fried Rosechu face, though."

"She only eats the babies. Says the adult chus are too gamey."

"Well, she'd be the one to know," chuckled Steve. "All things considered, that girl cooks up a damn fine feral."

Jexis stuck out her tongue and winced. "I just don't like the idea of eating them. It feels…dirty."

"It's a sacrifice we all have to make sometimes," the Jerkop explained. "There's only a few restaurants left in CWCville who'll serve us, and I'm pretty sure Helen just banned all of us after that little incident."

"What makes you so sure? The staff didn't seem to mind. Hell, they volunteered to clean up after us!"

"Yeah, that's true. I still think we ought to stay away from East Sun for a few weeks, though. How does Thai sound for next Saturday?"

"Allie's gonna love that," remarked Jexis.

"Okay, serious time now." Steve double-checked his belt to make sure his revolver and kukri were still within reach and out of sight. It was a chilly fall day, and his light grey trench coat wasn't exactly suspicious this time of year. Jexis had opted for a white hooded sweatshirt with a red cross on the back – simple, practical, and big enough to conceal the two pistols she'd strapped to her waist.

"Do we have to?" The young medic rarely ventured into high-risk areas without the rest of her squad. She was the type of person who preferred to run in behind Serge or another big person with a big gun. "I mean, do we really, really have to go right in there?"

Steve gave her a sad smile. "In short, yes. In long…very yes."

The two Jerkops had nearly reached the main stage by now. Behind it, six large cargo containers with the logo "CWC-Delivery" on their sides had been set up, each resting on top of a single flatbed truck that would soon carry a new load of boyfriend-free girls through the city and across the suburbs to the CWCville Shopping Center, where they then would await Chandler's dreaded, extremely personal inspection.

"Can you see any of them?" Jexis murmured in the tall Jerkop's ear.

Steve shook his head. "No, they keep the women in those big containers for processing. I've heard stories…just…just remember that we're going to make their lives a whole lot better after today. Don't think about it, just concentrate on the mission."

The medic nodded, but Steve could still see the hesitation in her eyes. Right now, that was the last thing he needed from the only member of his team with any kind of EMT training. Sometimes he wondered whether Amanda was right when she kept saying the girl was too young for war.

"Hey, it's all right," he said comfortingly, patting Jexis on the head. "Just follow me, and don't worry. I'll go in first if it'll make you…"

"_Uh, dis is Christian Weston Chandler, speaking to all tha…to all tha TRUE and LOYAL citizens, of CWCville, my CWCitizens."_

"Ah, _balls_," finished Steve as the Attraction Sign blinked off and was replaced with a huge blurry live image of Mayor Chandler in his office, surrounded by what looked like the aftermath of a tornado that had cut through both a Toys R Us and a first-grade art class. Chandler's smug eyes (one blue, one slightly greenish blue) leered down creepily into the audience he couldn't see, as if he were looking instead at the six truckloads of young, pretty women who were about to be delivered right to his doorstep.

"_I…I invite y'all ta share in dis…tha momentous day when my own Love Quest will finally re…reach its end…"_

"Also known as the day you die," Jexis snickered. Steve nearly burst out laughing himself and had to cover his mouth with his hand to hold it in.

"…_an' tha day when I, autistic virgin though I may be…will finally get that which, that which I have earned after enduring so many JERKS and so much STRESS!"_ Chris let out a short, annoying sigh. _"Bu…but dis year with my TRUE and ORIGINAL friends and creations Sonichu and Rosechu an…an' tha Chaotic Combo at my side, I will…I can finally disprove the hateful an' slanderous lie that 'Virginia is for Virgins!"_

Steve and Jexis looked at each other and shrugged. Where had _that_ particular slogan come from?

"_So I urge y'all to also celebrate my new Sweetheart from the Ground-Up, whoever she is,"_ Chris finished dismissively. _"An' remember ta stay TRUE, HONEST, and STRAIGHT."_

The screen switched back to the Attraction Sign, and Chandler's sweaty face disappeared. To say the crowd was relieved would be a major understatement.

"_All units, Heartbreaker,"_ Jason Kendrick Howell's voice growled through Steve's earpiece. _"I say again, Heartbreaker is in effect. Stand by for Stage Two."_

"Okay, go time, Cadet," ordered the Jerkop squad leader as he flipped back the straps on both his kukri sheath and belt holster. "Remember, don't start shooting until Wal-"

_BOOM!_

Mary Lee Walsh's jetboard shrieked by overhead, followed by a flash of white light and a colossal blast as the Attraction Sign flew apart in an explosion of circuitry, metal, glass, and fire. The loyalist mercenaries and EHPF officers on the stage sprinted for cover as the entire screen snapped free of its crane hoist and plummeted earthward, smashing straight into the exhibition platform.

_CRASH! _Blazing wooden planks, steel beams, and bits of crushed glass sprayed out across the plaza in a fountain of pure destruction, pelting the surrounding buildings with debris and sending the crowd scattering for cover. The sabotage had been enacted with deadly precision, though, and Mary Lee Walsh had planned it out to the letter. Not a single civilian was inside the blast radius when the Attraction Sign hit the ground.

The two Jerkops each withdrew a pair of ski goggles and a dust mask from their backpacks and strapped them on simultaneously. Seconds later, they were swallowed up by the expanding cloud of smoke and debris. Across the plaza, the first few gunshots began to sound.

"Blue Six-Sigma! Blue Six-Sigma!" a voice croaked from up on the stage. "Situation's been compromised! Call in air support; we need Angelica after that witch and…OH GOD NO!"

_Crunch!_

Steve looked up to see a slender figure with bleached-blonde hair, green-trimmed body armor, and a gas mask delivering a quick and lethal curb-stomp to the obscured mercenary. He smiled. _Always first blood…that's Emily, all right._ If there was one group of Jerkops he didn't need to worry about, it was the Picklemen.

"Will you hate me if I rip off two more awesome movie quotes in the next ten seconds?" Steve murmured through his mask as his coat fluttered open in the sudden wind.

"If it's awesome enough, and if it's the last one today, then go nuts," replied Jexis.

"Then I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass," snarled Steve as he unsheathed his kukri in one fluid movement. With his other hand, he grabbed his Colt Python and cocked back the hammer, Clint Eastwood-style. "And this is my boomstick."

"Whatever you say, Ash Nukem." Unzipping her sweatshirt, the teenager drew both of her pistols and spun them on her fingers. "Hey, I actually did it this time! Awesome!"

"Straight to the fourth container, breach and clear the bay door," said Steve. "Now let's go break Chandler's heart."

"CONTACT!" shouted Zoey, diving behind a twisted mass of steel supports as a loyalist mercenary swung around and raised his MP5 to fire. The SMG rounds zipped past and rebounded off the makeshift barricade, but failed to penetrate. Another two chattering bursts pelted into the plaza floor, kicking up tiny pieces of rubble where they impacted on the concrete.

Jake slid in beside her, shotgun in hand, panting and covered in a fine layer of dust.

"They picked themselves back up pretty fuckin' quick!" he yelled. "Did you see Steve or Jexis?"

Zoey winced as another shot _ding_ed off a beam two feet from her head. "No! We don't have time for a shootout like this – unload on that asshole!"

"Gladly," growled Jake, and leapt up without hesitation.

_BANG! BANG!_ Two blasts from the Jerkop's shotgun sent the mercenary scurrying for cover. Zoey clutched her AK-47 in one hand and vaulted over the twisted metal shield, praying the loyalist wouldn't try and…

More bullets snapped and hissed through the air, closer than ever now. The woman cursed and fired off a couple of three-round bursts, forcing her attackers back down. The dust cloud was beginning to clear, but until then, they had to take out the mercs with eye protection as quickly as possible in order for Steve and Jexis to reach the trucks in one piece.

The familiar _crack_ of Steve's revolver echoed across the plaza-turned-battlefield. Through the dust and smoke, Zoey could see a pair of figures running for the line of cargo containers and trucks. Jexis was bringing up the rear, her dual pistols blazing away at anything in sight.

_Well, at least Jake and I drew most of the attention,_ thought Zoey with relief, and lifted the AK's sight up to eye level. Targeting the closest EHPF officer, she squeezed the trigger and smirked in satisfaction as the chu collapsed with a ragged hole in his skull. She liked to pretend each one she killed was the original Sonichu. _Zap this to the extreme, you yellow bastard._

"Al, get Matt out here," she spat into the radio clipped to her shoulder. "We're done. It's all up to Morrison and the medic now."

"I thought Walsh said there were only like five or ten mercs!" Steve shouted as he hoisted Jexis up onto the rear of the flatbed truck.

"There…_are_…only five or ten," gasped the medic, fighting for breath. "Per truck."

"Aw, son of a…" Steve edged his way along the side of the cargo container, feeling for a door with the back of his hand. "I can't see a thing. If we wait for it to clear up, we'll be exposed. Get ready to breach."

Jexis looked confused. "Breach with what?"

"Just don't kill him." Spinning his kukri around, Steve slammed the hilt three times against the back of the container. A hollow booming echo reverberated through the truck.

"_What squad are you with?"_ a muffled voice yelled from inside the container.

"JUST OPEN THE DAMN DOOR!" screamed the Jerkop, and winked at Jexis. "WE'RE GETTING SLAUGHTERED OUT HERE!"

The door flew open, revealing a man in a white lab coat.

"All right, get in h-" he began, but was quickly silenced when Jexis pressed a pistol against his forehead.

"What's your name?" Steve asked quietly.

"Paul Miles."

"Do you have a family, Paul?"

The technician nodded. His eyes were wide with terror.

"How many guards inside?" asked the Jerkop, grabbing Paul by the front of his coat.

"None…only…only a few techs and sorters," gasped the man. "Jesus, please don't kill me!"

"Get out of here as fast as you can." Steve ordered, and shoved him off of the flatbed. Paul hit the ground hard, but quickly leapt up, unhurt. He hesitated for a few seconds, then dashed off across the plaza. Seconds later, the sound of an igniting diesel engine filled the air. The truck rumbled.

Steve glanced back at Jexis. "That's our cue. No matter what you see in there, _just keep moving_."

The medic swallowed nervously and readied her pistols. "Let's do this."

One after the other, the two Jerkops edged around the doorway and plunged on ahead, into the darkness of Sweetheart Transport Four.

"Right, they're in," reported Kuri, stowing her binoculars. "Matt's going to pick us up first, right?"

Al shook his head. "He'll be closer to Zoey's team from the plaza. We'll exfil once he picks up her and Jake. Let's go."

Zoey snarled and jammed her last magazine up into the AK's breech. These loyalist mercs were really pissing her off now. Not only were they incredibly hard to hit, but they seemed to be everywhere, and what's more, they were actually pretty damn dangerous at a distance. Three bullets had almost grazed her already, and she'd only killed a single chu and possibly wounded two mercenaries.

Jackie had lost two of her Tomgirls already, and the remaining Spikes of Blue had been forced to pull back after blowing out their target truck's tires. Having already secured and rescued all of the prisoners in their truck, the Picklemen were now helping as many other Jerkop squads as they could. Someone had once said the safest place in CWCville was always the one protected by Emily and her squad, and right now, Zoey was finding that easier and easier to believe.

"Where did he find these guys?" Jake shouted as he unleashed another barrage of buckshot over the remnants of Chandler's Attraction Sign. Judging by the yell of pain, the Jerkop had at least hit _something_.

"Bob Chandler's legacy," gasped Zoey. "Wanted his son to rule CWCville with an iron fist, ended up with a fat autistic man-child. Mix that with a private army and we all get screwed."

"Wish he'd come back out of retirement…see what his little Chris turned the place into." Jake slid a handful of shells into his shotgun and wrenched the slide back and forth. "Argh! GET IN THERE!"

A flurry of SMG rounds ricocheted off the top of the Sign fragment, clipping off a hunk of glass and electronics.

"You've got to be kidding." Zoey groaned in despair. "Al! Al, get Matt on the line! Tell him we're gonna get torn to pieces if he doesn't…"

_CRASH!_

Zoey and Jake spun around in panic as something huge, yellow, and armored plowed right through a pile of blazing wood behind them and screeched to a halt. A familiar horn honked twice before being interrupted by the deafening _crack-crack-crack_ of a .50 caliber machine gun mounted to the side of the weaponized school bus.

"_All aboard!"_ Matt's voice crackled through the radio.

"PVCC! PVCC! Get your hands where we can…" Steve's yell trailed off as he stormed into the Sweetheart Transport with Jexis at his side. "Son of a… This has gotta be pre-processing."

The small room was empty but for a large pile of what looked like scraps of garbage and several stacks of documents and folders lying on a table set into the wall. Steve lowered his revolver, sheathed his kukri, and stepped over to examine the papers.

"Shipping schedules…ETDs…totally useless," he growled, shuffling the papers around furiously. "Layout! Where's the processor room layout?"

"Steve?"

"Come on, it's gotta be…subject data? Eligibility? What the fuck _is_ all this?"

"Steve!"

"Yeah? Did you find it?" The Jerkop looked up to see his cadet kneeling by the large pile, sorting through it with her hands. "Wait…what's that? Spare fabric?"

"They're…" Jexis's voice trembled as she held up a small black lacy triangle. "They're clothes, Steve. Women's clothes."

Realization dawned on Steve with the force of a sixteen-ton weight crashing down upon an unsuspecting victim. "Sweethearts from the Ground-Up. Holy hell. _Crystal_."

"What? What are they doing?"

Steve hurried over, his eyes blazing with fury and understanding. "Chandler doesn't want to _just_ get laid, Jexis. He could force that on any woman he wanted to. Why do you think the requirements are so specific? Why do you think he started this entire event? Why do you think he hasn't even bought a hooker yet? _He wants a mother for his daughter._"

The medic gasped. "You mean all these women are…"

"Being remade from the ground-up…to be ideal wives." Steve buried his face in his hands. "It all makes sense now. That egotistical _bastard_. He'll sort through them all and pick out a select few with genes that fit his plan for a perfect daughter. I don't know what he'll do then…torture, most likely. Brainwashing. Matt, Jake, and Allie said there was a sublevel network under the Shopping Center. Maybe that's where the chus came from as well."

"And what about the ones he doesn't pick?"

Steve laughed bitterly. "Use your imagination."

Jexis's eyes narrowed into steely slits. "That's it. We're hijacking this truck."

A ghost of a smile spread across the Jerkop's face. "That, Cadet, is why Al chose you for my squad. Come on."

Steve had never been one for subtlety. Raising a steel-toed boot, he kicked in the flimsy door and barged through to the next room. Jexis followed him in with both pistols at the ready.

"PVCC! PVC-AAAAGH!" he yelled, and dove for cover as a large heavy wrench hurtled toward his head. The airborne tool clipped him on the shoulder as it spun, but failed to cause any lasting damage outside of one very ugly, very discolored bruise.

"STEVE!" Jexis slid down to the floor beside her stunned squad leader, hurriedly checking him with one hand while her other kept a pistol aimed ahead. "You okay? Where'd it hit you?"

"I'm…ow…fine," groaned Steve, and rolled over onto his back. "Could you please go get him? I want to hit _him_ with a wrench, see how _he_ likes it."

The medic nodded and rose to her feet, searching for the telltale flash of a white lab coat in the dim light. She didn't know how many technicians were left, but these ones obviously weren't willing to give up as easily as Paul had.

"PVCC!" she called out through the cavernous processing room. "We're armed and we're taking this truck. Give yourselves up and no one gets hurt!"

There was no answer. Jexis scanned the room with her eyes, making note of any possible hiding places the techs might be using. This was obviously the main chamber. Three long lines of seven-foot high steel rectangular boxes stretched down the room – two rows on the sides and one down the middle. The medic could have sworn she heard muffled noises coming from some of them, but the truck was rumbling so much that it was nearly impossible to tell. At the far end, near the transition point between the container and the truck cockpit, was a large bank of what looked like giant flatscreens and computers.

_Bingo._ Jexis grinned and began creeping down the left aisle. The boxes flanked her on both sides like metal gravestones. She had a pretty good idea of what they held, but now wasn't the time to be thinking about things like that.

Footsteps sounded behind her. The medic whipped around just in time to evade a fierce downward strike from a metal shovel. The heavy tool clanged down harmlessly against the floor, but the attacking technician must have been expecting Jexis's dodge. Without hesitation, he quickly rushed forward and smashed the teenager across the jaw with his elbow.

Jexis yelled in pain and flung out an arm to break her fall. She slammed into one of the boxes forcefully, but was able to ignore the pain long enough to wisely duck her head down. The shovel's second blow caught a few of her hairs and put a heavy dent into the container's metal surface, but it was better than being decapitated or maimed.

"Quit…moving…you…little…BITCH!" snarled the tech, grappling madly at her face with his free hand.

_It's just like training, it's just like training,_ Jexis thought frantically as she fought to parry the incoming assault. Her pistols were pretty much useless at such a close range. _I'm just fighting Kuri or Matt. Get in there, I'm faster than this guy!_

With a fierce yell, the girl ducked low, dropped a pistol, and charged, headbutting the man right in the soft part of his stomach. The two combatants slammed into another box, but this time, it was Jexis who had the upper hand.

_Desperate times_, she thought, and drove the muzzle of her remaining pistol as hard as she could directly into the most vulnerable spot on any man's body.

_Crunch!_

"Nice!" remarked Steve as he appeared from the opposite aisle, politely escorting another captured technician with his kukri. "My advice – lose one of the guns and keep your scalpel out next time. I know akimbo-style looks awesome, but I'm guessing you had a bit of trouble with that guy."

"No…no problem," panted Jexis. She let her passed-out victim crumple to the floor. "Was this…the one…you were talking about?"

Steve shook his head. "Nah, that would be Vic here. We had a nice little chat while you two were beating the living hell out of each other. Three down, one driver to go. Plus, Vic's kindly agreed to give us a hand, isn't that right?" He pressed the kukri's razor edge a few millimeters further into the skin of the technician's throat.

Vic tried not to swallow. "Y-y-yes."

"Then we don't need this anymore." Steve withdrew the curved knife and sheathed it. "Jexis, keep a gun on him. Let's go see what's in these boxes."

Once they'd reached the computer bank at the end of the aisle, Steve forcefully shoved his captive away and quickly aimed the Python at Vic's head. "Right. Start typing and we might just let you off before we get to HQ."

"Y'know, I…I never liked this job," stuttered the technician as he keyed in a string of security codes. "I'd be happy to work for you guys if you'd…"

"I don't hear you unlocking those doors." Steve cocked the hammer back.

"Right, right." Vic typed a final command and hit Enter. "That's it. Security's cleared. You can open the cells now."

"Thanks," replied Steve, and whacked him across the face with the wrench. Vic was out cold before he hit the floor.

Jexis chuckled. "Let's give that to Matt when we get back."

"Good idea." Steve tossed her the wrench and slammed his fist down on a large red button beneath a sign that read "CONTAINMENT OVERRIDE." With a sharp hissing noise, the steel boxes unlocked and swung open to reveal their contents.

In their time as members of the PVCC, the two Jerkops had witnessed many of the horrors Chandler chose to inflict upon his own citizens. They'd seen protesters zapped to death by EHPF riot police, witnessed dozens of men and women snatched right out of their homes for the "crime" of being homosexual, and even watched helplessly as Angelica Rosechu, the "White Reaper," dealt out her unique form of punishment to the masses of "heathens" and "sinners" who dared question her new and harsh reforms to CWCville's official religion. They had heard stories of people starving in their own houses and apartments because of feral infestations. Kuri's entire family had died that very same way. They had been present for dozens of public executions carried out by the Chaotic Combo or one of Chandler's allies. They'd seen the bodies in the streets. They'd seen the dying children. They'd seen their city fall to pieces before their eyes.

And yet somehow, what they saw inside those boxes was enough to make every single one of the aforementioned atrocities look like mere acts of logical civil discipline.

Over ninety women, all between the ages of 18 and 21, had been suspended in each cell, chained by their wrists and ankles to the top and bottom of the steel containers. Except for a duct tape gag across their mouths and a hastily-stenciled identification number on their foreheads, all were naked and covered in scratches and bruises from the brutal beatings they'd received during their apprehension. A few had even suffocated, and now hung limp and unmoving from the ceiling. The seventy or eighty who'd managed to stay alive looked as though they were on the verge of madness. Judging by the endless propaganda being blasted at them through speakers in each cell, a good two or three of them had already slipped over the edge.

"_Christian Weston Chandler is your husband. A woman has three duties to her husband: cooking, cleaning, and sex. You will follow through on each of these duties with vigilance and enthusiasm. When not performing your duties as a wife, you will shop and talk on the phone. When you finally bear him a daughter, you will shoulder all responsibility for Crystal's upbringing. You will not resist. You will never say no. You are a Sweetheart from the Ground-Up. Christian Weston Chan…"_

_BANG! BANG!_

The voices ceased. Steve turned to see Jexis emptying her pistol into the console screen. The medic's face had twisted into an image of pure, undiluted loathing. Her eyes held only fire, and her voice held only hatred.

"SHUT UP! SHUT UP! SHUT UP!" she screamed, firing again and again into the sparking, wrecked control booth. Fragments of hot metal and glass exploded around her, but it was as if she felt nothing. When she finally let the gun drop from her numb fingers, she'd expended three full clips of ammunition. The console itself was beyond repair.

Steve's hands were shaking with fury, but something at the back of his head forced him to take a step forward into the closest cell. Holstering his revolver, he reached out, ripped off the duct tape from the hanging body, and gently touched the woman's cheek with the back of his hand.

There was no pulse…only cold skin.

"FUCK!" The Jerkop slammed his fist against the side of the cell. Bitter tears gathered at the corners of his eyes as he stumbled back out into the aisle, away from the dead prisoner. "WHY?"

Six truckloads…nearly six hundred innocent women taken in the prime of their lives, all bound for death or servitude, stripped of their dignity, their clothes, and their spirit - their freedom and sanity snatched away without a second thought by the will of a tyrant. Many of them probably had boyfriends after all. They all certainly had families. What had their parents been told? Did they know their daughters were now destined to become a zombie-wife to bear Chandler's prophesized child, or else be wiped from the record like so many other "vanished" citizens? _And Kuri…if they'd taken her…or Allie…or Kacey or Megan or Jackie or Emily or…_

"Steve?" Jexis's voice trembled. She sounded on the verge of a breakdown. Steve himself was doing everything he could to silence the thunder in his mind. As squad leader, he was expected to set an example for his operatives, but then again, he had never dealt with a situation of this magnitude before.

"Yeah, Jexis?"

"We…we should let them down…" The medic's voice sounded miles away, even though she was standing right in front of him. "I've got my kit…"

"Right." Steve drew his revolver and gave the cylinder a quick spin. "Follow me. We're bringing everyone home." Without another word, he turned and headed for the door. Jexis slid her last clip into the pistol, chambered a round, and hurried after her squad leader.

_BANG!_ A quick shot from the Python punched a hole straight through the lock. The two operatives kicked the door open and were immediately greeted by a blast of hot exhaust from the truck. Judging by the scenery flying past outside, they were on the highway, and had traveled about halfway through the CWCville suburbs by now.

Steve dropped onto the flatbed and helped Jexis down as well. The truck cockpit was blocking most of the wind, but both Jerkops could clearly see a few yellow headspikes through the tiny, unreachable rear window. The drivers were EHPF. _Figures. Chandler wouldn't trust the mercs to deliver such an important payload._

"Side entry!" he yelled over the howling wind. "Take the right!"

Jexis nodded and started inching her way around to the cockpit. Normally she might have protested such a dangerous maneuver, but the horrors she'd witnessed in Sweetheart Transport Four had temporarily killed any reluctance in her mind.

Holstering the Python, Steve gripped the exhaust pipe and swung himself out around the edge. Another one of the eighteen-wheelers roared past on the right lane, so close that the backwash nearly knocked the Jerkop clean off the truck. Steve's fingers throbbed with pain, but somehow he managed to hold on and press himself flat against the side. Now came the hard part – climbing over. He hoped Jexis's sudden burst of courage hadn't worn off yet.

A muffled blast sounded from the second truck's cargo container as the Jerkop squad inside breached their way out with explosives. Steve gritted his teeth and looked over his shoulder to see a pair of armed operatives emerge from the smoky darkness. One of them noticed him and waved, then pointed to the cockpit of their truck. Steve squinted. It looked as if the Jerkop were mouthing something…

_Shoot the tires._

Steve cursed under his breath and reached for the Python. It was going to be a tricky shot, but as long as the trucks kept moving at the same speed, he might just be able to pop one. As for what would happen once the tire blew…well, he guessed the Jerkops over there had decided to leave that little detail up to fate. Hopefully the chus would slow down or try to stop.

Leveling the revolver, he exhaled and squeezed the trigger. The shot went wild and ricocheted harmlessly off the truck's chassis, leaving only a dent. Steve fired twice more, but couldn't see where they'd hit. He moved his aim a few millimeters ahead to compensate, then loosed off the last three bullets in the cylinder.

The front two tires exploded with a loud double pop, disintegrating into scraps of rubber. The fourth shot had pierced both at once. Steve heard a squeal of brakes as the truck skidded and slowed down, quickly disappearing behind its partner. It was all up to the other Jerkop squad now.

Eyes squeezed nearly shut against the wind, Steve stowed his revolver and climbed hand over hand along the truck. Every movement, no matter how small, was draining his energy. He had to get to the door…he had to get inside…

With a final lunge, the Jerkop hurled himself forward and smashed the handle of his Python into the window. The two chus inside yelled in surprise and recoiled as the glass shattered all over them, but even if they'd known he was coming, it would have already been too late. Grinning, Steve flipped his revolver around and opened fire at point-blank range. There was no way he could miss.

_Click-click-click-click._

In the chaos, Steve had completely forgotten to reload. He reached for his kukri, but the driver was already charging up a deadly bolt of electricity…

_BANG! BANG!_

Steve yelled in terror and nearly lost his grip as a gush of warm blood splashed across his face. The chus collapsed simultaneously. Behind them, Jexis was hanging from the roof by one hand. Her other hand clutched a smoking pistol.

"Get in there and drive!" she screamed.

Seizing the dead chu around its neck, the Jerkop swung himself inside and shoved it out into the highway. It bounced a few times and rolled away into the distance. Steve quickly grabbed hold of the wheel as Jexis pushed the other EHPF officer out of the cockpit and slid into the seat beside him. Somehow, he managed to steer the entire truck out of its dangerous skid.

"You okay, Cadet?" he asked.

The medic nodded and wiped her brow. "I almost fell off a couple times. What were you shooting at?"

"Another shipment made it out of the plaza. I just helped out some friends in need." Steve wheeled the truck toward the nearest exit. "Let's get this back to Slumberland."

"Pull over. I'm gonna go back inside to free the Sweethearts. Some of them might be hurt."

"Good. Good." Steve nodded. "Yeah, I'll just…pull over here…Jexis, are you sure you're okay?"

"I am now," the girl replied. Her voice was still shaky, but determined. "If it's all right with you and Al, though, I think we're all gonna need a few days' break after we get home."

Steve let out a relieved chuckle and brought the truck to a full stop at the side of the road next to the highway. "No objections here. All right, Call HQ and tell 'em we're bringing the truck home."

"Roger that," said Jexis, and leapt out of the cockpit.

"Hey, one more thing!" Steve yelled out the window as the medic hurried off toward the transport container.

"Yeah?"

"Thai, right?"

Jexis grinned. "Thai."

**THE END**

* * *

**Jerkop Squad Profile: The "Honey Badgers"**

**Commander/Tactician: Albert "The Legend" Ledger**

**Weapons of choice: Always something unexpectedly creative**

Albert Ledger, better known as Al, first experienced combat when he served in a squad alongside Matthew Devoria in the Gulf War. After surviving three full tours across two conflicts and earning the rank of master sergeant, Ledger left the military to pursue a less stressful career as a construction worker in CWCville. During the chu takeover, he turned to alcohol to stave off his worries, but eventually was forced to quit his job. He was one of the first civilians to join the PVCC in 2000, and only one of six members back then who had any kind of formal military training. Mary Lee Walsh naturally gave him command of his own squad, which saw several incarnations before finally evolving into the Honey Badgers.

When not on a mission or giving orders to teams in the field, Ledger enjoys poker, whiskey, the occasional pipe, and metalworking. Over the years, he's accumulated a makeshift workshop of welding equipment and other necessities for forging new tools and armor. Given his love of the trade, he almost always wears a welding mask - both in and out of combat. It was Ledger who repaired the broken school bus which would eventually become the Battle Bus. As for other hobbies, he has been working on an extensively-researched guidebook covering the most efficient and most creative methods of exterminating Sonees and Roseys. He expects it to be a best-seller, especially in CWCville.

**Squad Leader: Steven Morrison**

**Weapons of choice: P90, Colt Python revolver, kukri**

A long time ago in a city far, far away from CWCville, a young boy named Steven Morrison set out to seek his fortune as a journalist. After spending three years on the road, writing for various newspapers and magazines across the region formerly known as Kanto, he applied for a steady job as a reporter for the_ Forum_, the PVCC's official school news. After the attack on the Shopping Center, Morrison found himself alone once the college was closed down. As the Sonichu and Rosechu population began to grow, he sought a new job at the _CWCville Times_, but was rejected by direct order of the mayor for "helping those JERKS at the PVCC." Morrison struck back by writing for CWCville's more liberal newspapers. He was immediately blacklisted, but in 2001, Jason Kendrick Howell offered him a place in the resistance.

One year later, Morrison and Albert Ledger had formed the Honey Badgers Jerkop squad and were among the most active field agents in the PVCC. The many months of service had taken a heavy toll on his mind, though, and even though activity was limited to mere subterfuge at the time, the sheer number of atrocities he witnessed began to forge a deep hatred for chus in his mind. As the current squad leader of the Honey Badgers, Steve is half good-natured comrade, half cold-hearted destroyer. He often writes letters to his sister Tanya, but any other information concerning Morrison's family remains unknown.

**Secondary Squad Leader/Support Gunner: Zoey Francesca**

**Weapons of choice: AK-47, 9mm pistol, SOG knife**

One of the most loyal and aggressive operatives in the Honey Badgers, Zoey Francesca started, oddly enough, as an art major at the PVCC college. She was a kind, sweet-natured girl who loved long walks in the park and specialized in painting elaborate and beautiful scenes of clouds and sunsets. Unfortunately, she also happened to still be inside the building when Christian Weston Chandler ordered its demolition after temporarily disposing of Mary Lee Walsh.

The new Zoey that emerged from the ashes was a far cry from the sweet little art major she'd been for so many years. She lived in the slums of CWCville for a little over three years before Al and Steve picked her up on patrol. Armed with a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a fierce appetite for chaos and destruction, she loves long nights of hunting and specializes in painting CWCville's streets with the blood of juvenile and adult chus alike. As a very close friend of Steve Morrison's, Zoey's relationship with her squad leader has never been anything more than platonic, but she wouldn't have it any other way. Individually, she is a force to be reckoned with, but when paired with Steve, the two are nearly unstoppable. By his request, Zoey serves as a secondary squad leader, and will replace Steve if he is ever killed in action.

**Sharpshooter: Nick Martinez**

**Weapons of choice: bolt-action scoped rifle, 9mm pistol, machete**

Much of Nick Martinez's younger life remains unknown mostly due to a total lack of information, but it's safe to assume he grew up in a poor family somewhere in Baja California. At the age of eighteen, he applied for a job in the Mexican army and spent most of his young life battling drug cartels and gangs in Juarez, Tijuana, Mexico City, and other hotspots. He chose to retire at the age of thirty-three and used his military salary to buy a US citizenship, after which he moved to the region formerly known as Kanto to start a new life in Station Square. Nick is actually the only member of the Honey Badgers who joined as a mercenary, having survived the attack by Perfect Chaos in 1998.

After hearing of the PVCC's rise to power in CWCville, Nick moved into the city in 2001 and hunted down the resistance, offering his services as a sharpshooter. He was given a position in the Honey Badgers, but disliked the work at first, due to the fact that he had to report to Steve Morrison, who he viewed as too young and inexperienced. The two eventually warmed up to each other, but Nick remains highly critical of Steve's command. He is right at home in an urban environment, and is just as effective against chus as he is against loyalist mercenaries. To him, the uprising is, in its most basic form, just another way to earn some much-needed cash.

**Demolitions Specialist: Amanda Taylor**

**Weapons of choice: Grenade launcher, C4 charges, 9mm pistol, SOG knife**

As a black woman in CWCville, Amanda Taylor was destined for a hard life even before she learned to walk. Facing prejudice from the government under former mayor Robert Chandler, she nevertheless graduated high school, majored in chemistry at the PVCC, and held a job for five years as a construction worker. However, where Amanda truly excelled was the art of deconstructing buildings. Her employers decided that the best, safest, and cheapest way to remove any unwanted structure was to put her in charge of the demolition team, and Amanda quickly became a rising star in the highly respected industry of blowing shit up.

But like all good things, Amanda's job came to an end when Christian Weston Chandler succeeded his father as mayor. Suddenly, there was no more need for "people like her" to hold such a high status in CWCville, and the company was forced to let her go. When Albert Ledger appeared one night to offer her a new, much more entertaining job, she just couldn't refuse. Using her influence among her former employers, Amanda opened a supply line between the construction company and the PVCC, providing the Jerkops with plastic explosives and all sorts of heavy equipment. She now serves as the demolitions specialist for the Honey Badgers, and has gained recognition for inventing "The Baby Boomer," a clever new variety of IED.

**Medic: Jexis the Cadet **

**Weapons of choice: MP5, 9mm pistol, scalpel**

No one knows Jexis's last name, not even her. Born in a soup hotel to unknown parents, she was raised an orphan and given to a foster home once she turned four. Her foster father was a doctor, and influenced Jexis to take up a medical career once she entered college at the PVCC. Unfortunately, that dream ended at the age of sixteen when she ran away from home after a heated fight with her foster parents. In 2003, she eventually found her way – accidentally, of course - to the PVCC's Slumberland headquarters, and was offered a place to stay there. The administration originally didn't want her to be deployed in combat, but Albert Ledger convinced them that he needed a medic in the Honey Badgers, and thus, Jexis was inducted. She makes up for her lack of combat experience with a sharp mind, quick reflexes, and steady hands, as well as a wealth of medical knowledge and a healthy appetite to learn more.

**Interrogator/Cook: Kuri Tatsuno**

**Weapons of choice: Butcher knife, 9mm pistol, 2x paring knives, tekko-kagi, hockey stick**

Once, Kuri Tatsuno was an innocent young girl, filled with dreams of adventure. She left CWCville to embark on her own Pokémon journey and made her way to Mt. Coronet, where she captured her only Pokémon, a Lunatone, and gradually began to learn the skills necessary for survival in the vast wilderness of Kanto. Several years into the Chandler regime, after the chu takeover, Kuri received a distress call from her family. She returned home to discover that a single feral Sonee had been devouring all of the food in her house, and because her parents could not legally remove it, they and her two siblings had starved, becoming emaciated and mindless.

Furious, Kuri cooked the chu alive and ate it, but vengeance wouldn't bring back her family. She took to the streets, killing feral chus and living off of their meat for several months before Al and Steve found her and inducted her into the Honey Badgers. Kuri has now earned a reputation among her peers as "The Sonee Chef," due to her preference for cooking and eating the chu larvae she kills. The scars of her family's death remain, however, and her mind often flashes back and forth between the present and past. She will sometimes address her comrades as if she were speaking to her parents and siblings, and is also very protective of CWCville's oppressed human population. Before going on a mission, she covers her entire body with teal paint as a scare tactic. Interestingly enough, it works on both chus and humans alike with equal effect.

**Flame Trooper: Alyssa (Allie) Parker**

**Weapons of choice: "Trogdor the Burninator," 9mm pistol, SOG knife**

Alyssa (aka Allie) Parker's life has always seemed to revolve around fire. During high school, she got a job as a grill cook at the Burger King in the CWCville Shopping Center, and kept it for several years due to good business. When Chandler fired all of the mall cops (including Kevin, Jake, and Matt), Alyssa was left with a difficult choice – continue working in a place with zero security and numerous break-ins, or resign and seek a new career elsewhere. She eventually went with the latter out of fear. In the years that followed, Alyssa worked several jobs at the restaurants in downtown CWCville, but because the Mayor did not support these, they all soon went under. She had to resort to selling kebabs and hot dogs from a cart in the slum districts.

The PVCC picked her up in 2003, after her cart was destroyed by EHPF officers for "serving a promiscuous form of sausage that might result in wanton homosexuality." She suffered a major facial burn from a splash of hot oil during the sabotage. Matt and Jake requested that Alyssa be made a member of the Honey Badgers. After demonstrating an affinity for fire-based warfare, she was given the honor of carrying a special weapon – Al's homemade flamethrower which he affectionately named "Trogdor the Burninator" after the famous cartoon dragon. Ironically, her favorite foods are ice cream and sushi, though she absolutely loves spicy Thai as well.

**Support Gunner: Serge Khitrovo**

**Weapons of choice: RPD, Makarov pistol, KA-BAR knife**

A true-blooded Russian in every sense of the word, Serge emigrated to Kanto in 1992, after the collapse of the Soviet Union. A former Spetsnaz trooper, he quickly fell in with the Russian mob branches based in CWCville and participated in several major arms-smuggling jobs. Once the chus seized power under Chandler's new laws, many ridiculously strict gun control regulations were established and enforced by the EHPF, and all civilian-owned guns were confiscated. Faced with a dying business, Serge joined the PVCC in 2003 and brought many of his associates into the organization as well. Mary Lee Walsh and Jason Kendrick Howell were more than happy to accept a small army of furious, heavily-armed Russian mobsters, as well as several crates of RPDs, Kalashnikovs, various pistols and explosives, and enough ammunition to run a small war…which, oddly enough, was exactly the kind of thing the PVCC was gearing up for.

Serge is a big man with a big appetite (mostly for ham sandwiches) and big ambitions; therefore, out of all of the Honey Badgers, Al lets him wield the biggest guns. Serge's most notable downside is that he refuses to kill Sonees and Roseys, preferring "enemy who can give Serge good fight." As such, he only accompanies the squad on true combat assignments, or else sleeps in the Battle Bus until he's needed to provide fire support.

**Scout/Radioman: Jake Linneman**

**Weapons of choice: Shotgun, 9mm pistol, metal baseball bat**

Born and raised in CWCville, Jake Linneman attended the PVCC with his best friend Matthew Clark, and quickly earned an associate's degree in criminal justice. His dream of becoming an officer for the city police department began at the Shopping Center, where he served as a mall cop from 1996 to 1998. After Naitsirhc's attack and the arrival of the chus, Jake was fired along with Kevin Shaw, Matt, and many others. He kept in close contact with Matt during the years of CWCville's decline, and both men eventually received jobs as a Wal-Mart greeter and maintenance worker, respectively. The experience left him a bitter man, but the final straw came when a feral Rosey wandered into the store and began eating her way through the aisles. Jake and Matt killed it with a bucket of ammonia, and were placed under arrest by the EHPF. On their way to the station, the squad car was ambushed by the Honey Badgers. Steve Morrison immediately inducted the two into his squad.

**Driver: Matthew Clark**

**Weapons of choice: Shotgun, 9mm pistol, wrench**

Matthew Clark started out his post-college life as a pizza deliveryman, but quickly became dissatisfied with the job and decided to join the ranks of the CWCville Shopping Center mall cops. He became very good friends with Kevin Shaw after the arrival of the chus, but soon lost contact with him. He eventually met up with Jake Linneman, and both men applied for jobs at the CWCville Wal-Mart. Matt had always been good with maintenance work, so it was only natural that he received a job cleaning and fixing the store's heating, water, AC, and so on. After a nasty incident involving a Rosey and a bucket of ammonia, he and Jake were arrested, but were subsequently freed and inducted by the Honey Badgers. Given his experience with vehicles, Matt is the designated driver of the team, and is one of the only people who has earned Al's exclusive permission to drive the Battle Bus.

**Rifleman: Kevin Shaw**

**Weapons of choice: AK-47, 9mm pistol, hunting knife**

Kevin Shaw, the newest member of the Honey Badgers, is not nearly important enough to write a profile about…yet. Maybe someday, someone will chronicle his backstory. For now, he's only "the new guy."

**Squad Mascot: Sugarplum Fury**

**Weapons of choice: Claws, teeth, uncaring attitude**

The origin of this particular ratel, or honey badger, is one of life's great mysteries, but whatever her backstory was, it somehow led her to Kanto as an exotic pet on the black market. Being a honey badger, she promptly mauled her handlers and escaped into the streets of CWCville, where she survived for several months on the feral population of Sonees and Roseys. The group of PVCC resistance fighters under Al discovered her hiding in the slums, inside a little scrap metal den with dozens of tiny chu bones surrounding her. Though hostile at first, she was eventually tamed and became the symbol, the mascot, and the namesake of the Honey Badgers.

She was unknowingly christened by Al during a drunken fit later that day, who was listening to a bootleg CD of the entire Nutcracker Suite while playing poker against Steve. Sugarplum Fury ("Sugar" for short) is normally hostile to strangers, but over time, she has grown extremely loyal to Al, Steve, Zoey, and Nick. Once in a while, the squad may take her hunting to the inner city, then sic her on packs of ferals for their amusement. Sugar doesn't mind this at all.

**Squad Transport: The Battle Bus**

**Weapons of choice: Spiked bumper, three .50 caliber machine guns, grenade launcher**

Once a fully-operational school bus, this vehicle was abandoned in the slums of CWCville after the PVCC campus was abandoned. Early on, Al and a few Jerkop greenhorns discovered the bus's remnants and managed to tow the entire thing back to the warehouse they would eventually convert into a PVCC headquarters. Al eventually got it working again, though it took him nearly a year to do salvage all the necessary parts. With an overhauled engine, improved armor plating, and spiked tires, the newly-christened Battle Bus quickly became the perfect insertion and getaway vehicle for Jerkop squads.

In the end, a full three machine guns and a grenade launcher were stolen from loyalist mercenaries and mounted on four emplacements - three inside the bus and one on the roof. The machine guns cover the sides and rear, while the rooftop grenade turret has a full range of 360 degrees. Foes in the front must contend with the spiked bumper. Most of the interior has been treated with a layer of rubber to protect against chu electric attacks, but the Battle Bus remains vulnerable to mines, rockets, and other explosives. Matthew Clark is its designated driver.


	8. Chapter 5: Jerk Ops

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 5: Jerk Ops**

**March 22, 2004, CWCville slums, PVCC "Slumberland" headquarters**

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_

"You keep squeezing it too hard," Zoey warned Kevin, frowning as all three of his shots went wild and cratered the backboard. "I keep telling you – you don't have to crush the trigger. Just…click it. Like this." She drew her own pistol and blasted a hole in the nearest wooden Sonee-target's face. "Click."

Kevin sighed in frustration, ejected the spent clip, and reached for a new one. Zoey was definitely a good teacher, but he just didn't connect that well with firearms. So far today he'd managed to hit two targets completely by accident, and only one of them actually counted as a fatal wound.

He needed to step up his game, and he had to do it before midnight. "Operation Rift" was the talk of Slumberland now, and the anticipation of a first mission was nearly killing him. He'd been going stir-crazy in the PVCC headquarters, even though most of the Honey Badgers were more than happy to talk with him. Most. Serge wasn't particularly good at conversations, Nick wasn't too interested in him, and as for Sugarplum Fury…well, the less said to her, the better.

In the time between his induction and now, Kevin had quickly grown reacquainted with his long-lost Shopping Center pals. Jake, Matt, and Allie always seemed to have a truckload of stories to share about their experiences - both before and after they'd joined the resistance. Allie still wouldn't divulge any information about the burn on her face, but he knew from the look in her eyes that it had something to do with the chus. Hell, everyone seemed to have a gripe against them…all but Nick and Serge. The sniper had killed his fair share, true, but then again, he'd signed on with the PVCC as a soldier of fortune. Serge just liked to fight. His beef was with Chandler himself, and if Chandler's creations got in the way, then it was their own damn fault.

As for Kevin, he and Zoey had spent the last two days shooting off pistols at the indoor firing range and getting him fitted for a set of equipment. The Honey Badgers' combat outfit was definitely mid-level in terms of gear – a pair of thick leather boots, a shoulder strap with a painted wooden badge, extra clips, a flashlight, dust mask, and of course the leather belt with his hunting knife and pistol. The unspoken rule of the PVCC was that the better a squad you were in, the better the gear you received. The Picklemen were the best of the best, therefore, they got Kevlar, grenades, and M4s. At the opposite end were squads like the BattleAXEs, who were lucky to even get three pistols total.

And as for the gun practice, well…

_BANG!_ The next shot impacted on the backboard and fragmented into pieces. The targets remained intact.

Zoey shook her head. "Try breathing out just before you fire. It'll get easier, trust me."

"It's not," replied Kevin angrily. "Why do I have to learn this now? If they're as easy to kill as you say they are, why do we even bother shooting them?"

"The ferals aren't what you should be worried about," Steve commented from the doorway behind them. "It's their parents we'll be using the guns on."

"Hey, Steve." Zoey glanced over her shoulder and removed one of her earplugs. "Any more news from Al?"

"Nah, he's just been revising our patrol route for Rift," replied the Jerkop, and nodded at Kevin. "How's he doing?"

"Terrible," Kevin spoke up before Zoey could answer.

Steve frowned. "You've been at this for two days. You must have improved at least a bit."

"Yeah, he has," said Zoey. Kevin wasn't going to argue with her there. The first time he'd ever fired a gun, the recoil had smacked him right in the cheekbone. Since then, he'd remembered to grip the pistol more firmly.

"If you're looking for motivation, those little bastards killed Kuri's family," added Steve, and promptly left the room.

"Did they really?" asked Kevin, and turned to Zoey. "She never said anything about…"

"We found Kuri living on the streets a couple years ago," explained the Jerkop. "One feral Sonee had eaten her family into starvation…this was before we really knew the chus were breeding, obviously."

"Are they really all that bad?" Kevin placed his gun on the table and checked one of the hastily-assembled "field guides" that Al had made for each of the squad members to use. "They just look so damn harmless. Kind of…dare I say it…cute."

Zoey laughed bitterly. "Harmless? Home-bred larvae, maybe. Not ferals. And as for the cuteness factor…well, you just hang on to that thought until we go out later tonight." She gestured to the firing range. "And speaking of which…"

Kevin gritted his teeth and raised the pistol. It was going to be a long day.

**Eight hours later, 11:43 p.m.**

"Lighters, fuel, ammo, canteen refills!" shouted Amanda from her seat behind the card table. "Last chance! Anyone?"

"I'm good," replied Jake as he buckled his shoulder strap. "Kevin, you need anything? First time, you know…"

Kevin laughed. "The way I've been shooting, I'll probably need about ten extra mags per chu."

"Oh, stop that." Allie gave him a friendly punch and resumed tying on her boots. "You're too hard on yourself. Remember, we all had to go through training too. Most of us flat out sucked."

"Not Serge," grunted Kuri in perfect imitation of the large Russian as she pored over her copy of the field guide. "Little wooden shock-pigs no match for Serge. Need better fight."

"Yeah…anyway," continued Allie as she turned back to Kevin, "you just stay with Jake and I and you'll be fine. They're not all that danger-"

Jake's face abruptly turned about three shades whiter.

"Oh…right." Allie smiled awkwardly. "Sorry, Jake."

"It's…it's fine." The Jerkop sounded as though he'd just had his soul sucked out. "Don't ever say that again."

Kevin blinked confusedly. "What's he…"

"I'll tell you later," muttered Allie, and began bunching her long hair into a ponytail. "Don't worry, just concentrate on…"

"Evening," a muffled voice sounded from the doorway.

Kevin looked over his shoulder as Al entered the room wearing his trademark welder's mask. The Legend rarely ventured outside his office unless the situation required his immediate attention, and even then, he usually relied on Steve and Zoey to sort the more minor things out. Matt had told Kevin that Al was in charge of coordinating his tactical plans with the other Jerkop squad leaders like Emily and Blanca, and therefore he seldom went on missions himself unless they were of the utmost importance to the PVCC.

The Honey Badgers turned and saluted as their commander strode up to them. Al raised a hand.

"At ease," he said, and turned to Kevin, Jake, Allie, and Kuri. "I just wanted to give you four some information before Steve comes to take you out on patrol. He's going over the plan with the other active squad leaders right now." The Legend glanced at Kevin. "Shaw, how are you?"

"Uh, I'm fine, sir."

"I'm _Al_. Don't _sir_ me," Al corrected him. "Now I just wanted to let you know; you might think you know the CWCville slums pretty well, but odds are, you've never even heard of the abandoned zone – that's the place Steve's taking you tonight. Scrapland's some pretty rough terrain, and you'll be taking the old canals to get there. Just follow the others and don't do anything stupid. As for the chus…" He chuckled. "Use your imagination. I'll be debriefing you and the others when you get back. Understood?"

Kevin nodded.

"Good." Al looked at the other three Honey Badgers. "Watch each other's back and don't get separated. Chandler knows we're up to something, so it's a safe bet that the EHPF are gonna be out in force tonight. We'd prefer that we didn't need to extract you, but I've got Matt standing by with the Battle Bus just in case." He turned and headed for the door. "Good luck, and good hunting. See you at the debrief."

Almost as soon as Al disappeared, Steve entered to take his place. The Jerkop squad leader wore an intimidating array of combat gear, including his kukri, a revolver, and a silenced P90 submachine gun that Kevin had never seen before. A black-painted dust mask concealed his nose and mouth, and he'd wisely swapped his white sweatshirt for a dark grey version.

"That's it," said the Jerkop with grim satisfaction, and pointed to his four-man squad. "We've got the final green light for Operation Rift." He withdrew a collar and leash from behind his back and stepped over to Sugarplum Fury's cage. "Kit up and meet me at the garage in five minutes. This city's full of little chus that need exterminating, and I intend to show our dear administration that the Honey Badgers do not give a _shit_ about how many are out there."

**Fifteen minutes later, CWCville slums, abandoned zone**

Kevin thumbed through Al's chu field guide as the pickup truck bounced and rumbled down the gravelly road through CWCville's abandoned zone. It was all he could do to keep his mind off the task at hand.

_Navitaricius sonee,_ explained the smudged typewriter print below a hasty sketch of a small fat rabbit-like Pokémon, _is the first stage of evolution for the male Electric Hedgehog Pokémon species – the larval form of an adult Sonichu. Better known as Sonees, these small creatures are often easily mistaken for Pikachus or Pichus by uninformed observers, and indeed are closely related due to the merge in 1998. Their female counterpart is the Rosey, better known as Navitaricius rosey. Sonees are recognizable by their Pikachu-like yellow and brown fur coat, their soft, undeveloped headspikes, the presence of armstubs and large blue sneakered feet. Much like the Rosey's skirt and bow, the origin of said sneakers remains unknown. The normal cry of a Sonee is simply its own name, but much like the Meowth, they seem to possess a rudimentary intelligence which allows them to learn and recite certain words and phrases, most notably a shrill "Yay!" for displays of excitement or happiness. At the age of 3, a Sonee begins to develop a set of small, sharp teeth for defending itself and dispatching smaller prey. Like Roseys, they cannot generate full bolts of bioelectricity, but may generate a small spark from their cheekspots to ward off intruders. A large feral population…_

It was still hard to believe he'd never seen even one of these creatures in the six years he'd spent in Soup Hotel #4. Kevin and his hobo friends had gone salvaging nearly every night, yet they only encountered raccoons, stray dogs, and the occasional mugger or junkie. Never a Sonee or a Rosey. And now suddenly the PVCC were all up in arms about exterminating the entire population as a sort of warning to the Chandler loyalists.

In truth, Kevin still didn't understand the hatred for these things. They looked harmless and cute enough to him – no more threatening than a fat Pichu. Yet Kuri despised (and regularly devoured) them, Steve and Al were always talking about the best ways to kill them, and Jake…Jake seemed to be terrified by something about the creatures.

"This is it," Jake muttered to Kevin as the truck turned a corner and began slowing down. "We're coming up on the canal entrance now. As soon as we stop, go over the side and assemble on Steve. Watch your footing and stick close to me."

The Jerkop nodded and flipped the guide shut. Stowing it in his pocket, he flipped open his holster strap and placed one hand on the pistol. Allie glanced at him and gave him a thumbs-up.

_You'll be fine,_ she mouthed.

Kevin smiled at her. Allie was really starting to grow on him as a friend, not just as a fellow revolutionary. She'd been a big help in his first few days at Slumberland: showing him where the amenities were, sharing information about the squad history and the PVCC in general, and best of all, she always had something to talk with him about. She'd come a long way from the Burger King in the CWCville Shopping Center, that was plain to see.

The truck braked and stopped at the side of a dilapidated gravel road. This was new territory to Kevin. A week ago, he would never have believed that downtown CWCville could contain such a run-down place as this "abandoned zone," but he was here, he was looking at it, and unless the Honey Badgers were all lying, he was about to walk right into the heart of it.

"Everyone out!" ordered Steve from the front passenger seat as he stepped down onto the roadside with Sugarplum Fury in his arms. "Safeties off! Jake, Kuri, check the perimeter."

"Got it," replied Kuri as she and Jake leapt over their respective sides of the truck's bed. Allie nodded to Kevin, then followed suit, heaving her giant flamethrower over the edge before she herself jumped down. Kevin _click_ed off the safety on his pistol, took a deep breath, and swung himself down. The gravel crunched beneath his boots as he hit the road.

Looking around, he could barely see the lights shining from skyscrapers and other buildings on the east side. This part of the slums was populated mostly by barren trees and bushes, gravel, rust, and long-abandoned apartments, stores, and hotels. Paper waste and plastic bottles of CWC Cola lined the streets, sometimes piled as high as a man's chest. There weren't any people in sight, but Kevin noticed a flaming barrel further up the road. He had a feeling he didn't want to meet the human inhabitants of the abandoned zone, hobo-friendly though he was.

"Clear left!" called Kuri from behind the truck.

"Clear right!" Jake shouted.

Steve nodded and raised a fist. "Assemble." Kevin and the others obediently gathered around their squad leader to await his orders. For their own sakes, they made sure to stand outside the radius of Sugar's leash.

"Right," continued Steve, scratching the honey badger behind her ears. "We're on our own for the next four hours, or else until I say it's time to go. Unless you're bleeding out and about to die, we're continuing this patrol. Kuri and Allie, you're Team One, Jake and Kevin, you're Team Two. If I ask you to go recon an area, you keep one eye on your teammate's back _at all times_. Understood?"

The Jerkops nodded.

"Excellent." Steve gently placed Sugar on the ground and gave his revolver's cylinder a quick spin. "Let's have some fun. Sugar, seek."

Sugar let out a savage growl and spun around once, then trotted off away from the road. Steve and the others began following her at a safe distance.

"How come she doesn't attack him?" Kevin whispered to Jake.

"Sugar's known Al and Jake since they found her," the Jerkop explained under his breath. "They somehow managed to domesticate her, but she doesn't usually let anyone other than Zoey, Nick, Al, or Steve actually handle her. Kuri nearly lost a finger yesterday, or so she says."

"Damn. I'd hate to see what she does to th-whoa!" Kevin stumbled over a small pile of trash, but kept his footing. Jake grinned and kept walking.

"Watch your step," Kuri advised him as she passed. "It only gets worse where we're going."

Kevin nodded and hurried ahead to catch up with Jake.

They'd reached a place that could only be the entrance to these canals everyone had been talking about. Beyond the gate of a rusted chain-link fence lay a large concrete channel and a few metal ladders. A hastily spray-painted sign that read **TO SCRAPLAND** hung from a cord between the two highest gateposts.

"Good to be back," commented Steve as he reeled in Sugar and nudged the gate open with his boot. "Come on." He tugged at the honey badger's leash and nodded to his squadmates. One by one, Kuri, Jake, Allie, and Kevin followed their leader through the gate.

The Scrapland pathway itself looked like something out of a classic post-apocalypse setting. Piles of rusting metal and paper waste lay strewn all across the bottom of the dried-up canal, making it resemble a giant clogged artery. Given the state of the city and the person in charge of running it, this was actually quite the fitting comparison.

There was no direct path down into the canals from where they were, but Steve led the squad over to a small open utility hatch a short distance away. Kevin leaned over the side and shone his flashlight down into the darkness below. He could just barely make out the floor.

"All right, single file down," ordered Steve as Sugar leapt up into his arms." Kuri, you first. Scope it out."

"Gee, thanks." The Jerkop rolled her eyes, grabbed the sides of the ladder, and slid into the access tunnel. In seconds, the darkness had swallowed her up.

"_Okay, clear,"_ Kuri called out from what seemed like miles away. _"Send the rest."_

Steve nodded to Jake, who quickly hopped on the ladder and climbed after his squadmate. Allie quickly tied a rope around her flamethrower and lowered the bulky weapon into the hatch, then followed Jake as soon as it was safely down.

Kevin took a deep breath and lowered himself over the edge. The steel rungs were coarse and rusty, but they held his weight all the same. Hand over hand, he climbed down, keeping his eyes fixed on the world above as Steve and Sugar grew smaller and smaller. After what seemed like five minutes, he felt the ladder give way to solid concrete, and stepped down to the floor.

_Click._ The Jerkop switched on his flashlight and clipped it to the handy attachment on top of his shoulder strap. The PVCC ran a lot of late-night operations to mess with Chandler's biological clock, and as such, they needed their operatives to have both hands free, even in dark places like this. Kevin let his eyes adjust for a few moments, then walked over to join Jake again.

Once Steve had safely climbed down with Sugar tucked under one arm, the hunt could resume. As the Honey Badgers made their way further into the underground canal, Kevin began to notice a few strange and unsettling signs of human presence. Graffiti covered the smooth concrete walls in a colorful mix of profanity, anti-Chandler slogans, and sloppy pornographic drawings of various combinations of male and female chus in various sexual positions. Many of them portrayed the Rosechus as having male genitalia. Further down the tunnel, the content of the drawings began to grow less and less juvenile and more ominous. Signs like **TURN BACK NOW, SCRAPLAND IS DEAD** reigned supreme, and the furry porn gave way to unsettling drawings of small pink and yellow creatures covered in blood.

"Ignore them," Allie suggested reassuringly. "Just a few coked-up salvagers letting off steam."

Kevin gave her a weak smile, but he felt his fingers tighten further around the grip of his pistol all the same. This was an evil place – an art gallery of nightmares. By now, the city lights were a mere blur behind them, and nothing lay ahead but darkness and uncertainty.

After about fifteen minutes of following Sugar through the canal's many twists and turns, Steve raised his hand and called a halt. The Jerkops immediately stopped and assembled around him.

"I think we're at the old junction to the sewers," he mused, and tossed a piece of beef jerky to the honey badger. "Jake, remember that old stairway shortcut I told you Al and I used to take?"

"Yeah?"

Steve pointed to a rusty door and some stairs set into the side of the tunnel. "Take Kevin and see if it's still standing. Meet us up ahead at the halfway point when you find it."

Jake glanced over at Kevin, then looked back to his squad leader. "All right, we'll check it out. Don't leave without us, okay?"

"Wouldn't dream of it," replied Steve. "Watch your step." He nodded at Kuri and Allie to follow him, then continued on down the canal.

"Good luck, you two," Allie called over her shoulder, and disappeared after Steve. Soon the three Jerkops were nothing more than flashlight beams moving back and forth in the darkness.

"Ah, I was afraid he'd have us doing this," muttered Jake as he walked over to the doorway and began gingerly climbing the metal steps. "Okay, looks like these ones are safe. Come on." He shoved the door open with one shoulder, provoking a sharp squeal from the rusty hinges. The two Jerkops quickly stepped through the doorway into the sewer junction, leaving the dark canal behind for a while.

The dilapidated metal walkway was lit by the faint yellowish glow of utility lights overhead, but at least it was more comforting than the pitch black canal. Kevin followed Jake closely, keeping an eye on the tunnel behind them as they made their way toward the sound of rushing water. The smells of sewage and decay hung thick and heavy in the air, even through the dust mask covering his nose and mouth.

"Goddamn it." Jake waved his hand in front of his face with disgust. "Smells like the mayor's office in the Shopping Center."

"No, this is…_cough_…this is much nicer," replied Kevin.

Jake laughed. "Ah, it's good to have you back. We all missed you, you know that? Matt and Allie and I? We never forgot."

Kevin smiled, touched by Jake's kind words. "What are the odds, huh?"

"Oh, probably the same as…" The Jerkop stopped so suddenly that Kevin nearly collided with him. "Wait. _Don't move_." Taking a few steps forward, Jake reached over his shoulder and slid the shotgun out of its straps. "Okay, stay close. We're definitely in feral territory now."

"_How do you know?"_ whispered Kevin. His heartbeat quickened as he steadied his own pistol.

Jake pointed to a small scrap of pink fabric wedged between one of the walkway railings and the floor. "Skirt cloth. Roseys never travel alone. There must have been a whole pack that went right through here on their way up to the surface." He chambered a shell with a loud _click-click_. "Keep your eyes open. Blue plastic, pink cloth, hair bows, candy wrappers, chu shit…you see any of those, you let me know."

Kevin was beginning to have serious second thoughts about the whole "cute" aspect of Sonees and Roseys.

The next few minutes passed in terrifying silence as Jake and Kevin made their way through the deserted sewer tunnels. The rushing water sounded extremely close now; perhaps it was flowing down though some pipe next to them.

"Runoff from the Hogwash area, probably," explained Jake. "These pipes were abandoned back when Chandler closed off this section of the city. We think it had something to do with the ferals. The chus breed so fast…they needed a safe place to dump their bastard offspring without drawing attention from the humans in CWCville."

"Well, it worked on me," Kevin muttered. "I've never even seen a live one yet."

Jake flashed a sinister grin. "Oh, you will. I bet you twenty bucks they're watching us right now."

"That's a serious wager," chuckled Kevin. Real US currency was something of a rare item in CWCville at the moment, especially since the mayor had implemented his new C-Quarter and W-Quarter-based economy. The custom-minted coins held next to no value in the international market, so therefore many of the wealthier and more sensible human citizens chose to store their money in other Virginia-based banks, and pay smugglers to transport suitcases of cash in and out of CWCville. And yet Chandler continued to wonder why the economy of his city was so awful.

"Just don't get too worried," continued Jake as he ducked through a small opening in the dry sewer pipe. "They might be small, but they're slow. If they're here, we'll see 'em soon enough."

Kevin followed him through without a word. His heart was still hammering against his ribcage. Up ahead was a larger room with a rusty, half-destroyed stairwell on the far wall. Looking up, he could see that it presumably led to either a higher level of the sewer, or else to the surface itself.

"Is that it?"

"Looks like that's our way up," Jake said with a satisfied smile. "We should probably test it first…see if it'll still hold our weight. We wouldn't want Steve or the girls breaking a leg, now would we?"

"Definitely not." Kevin walked up to the stairwell and scratched a bit of rust off the rail. "Want me to go first?"

"Nah, I'll do it. You follow me and hold on to my shoulder strap in case it collapses, okay?"

"Gotcha."

Step by step, the Jerkops began ascending the stairs with the utmost caution. Kevin stowed his pistol and grasped his partner's shoulder strap just above his shotgun holster, keeping his other hand on the railing in case he needed to act as a human anchor. Jake moved slowly, delicately, testing each step with his foot before pressing his entire weight down on it.

About thirty feet up, they came to another door that led further away into the CWCville underground. The stairway continued on past, and Jake was adamant about reaching the top prior to any further exploration. But first, he insisted they take a breather.

"You sure that's a good idea?" asked Kevin, eyeing the wobbly stairwell suspiciously. A rusty creak echoed through the room as some ancient beams above them ground against one another.

Jake nodded. "Better supports. We haven't broken it yet. Here, sit down and have some water."

Kevin obediently sank to the floor and unfastened the canteen from his belt. The cool liquid was a small measure of relief against the cloying sewer stench at the back of his throat. He gulped down a few mouthfuls and leaned back against the loose metal railing.

For the first time, he noticed the rusted pipes running around the stairwell from the second floor. What looked like a pair of fat fleshy maggots or worms squirmed disgustingly around the edges of the largest rust hole, presumably foraging for nutrients in the sewer waste that accumulated in the pipes. Kevin winced in revulsion and took another swig from his canteen.

"So, how do you like it so far?" asked Jake, oblivious to the worms in the pipe behind him.

Kevin swallowed the water. "I thought there'd be more shooting and blowing up cars."

Jake laughed. "Not so much these days. We're seriously outgunned because of all the loyalist mercs running around, but as for cars…did Amanda ever tell you what a Baby Boomer is?"

"Nope." Kevin shook his head. "Do I want to know?"

"Let's just say that it's a surprise that's worth the wait." Jake stood up and grabbed his shotgun. "Okay, let's keep moving. They're probably wondering why we're taking so long."

"Yeah, I kinda want to get out of here ASAP," admitted Kevin as the Jerkop helped him to his feet. "This place just plain creeps me out. Hold on, I need to stow my canteen." He looked down at his belt and began reattaching the grey plastic container.

Jake smiled and took a careful step forward onto the next set of stairs. "No worries. Take your time, Steve said we've got all night if w-"

"GOO-GOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"AAAAAHHHHH! FUCK! GAAAAAHH!"

_BANG!_

Kevin's head snapped upright at Jake's scream of panic and the thunderous shotgun blast. The Jerkop's face was covered in what looked like a misshapen blob of yellow, brown, and black fur with two of those fat pink worms sticking out of it. _Not worms,_ he realized with sudden terror. _Arms. Armstubs._

"JAKE!" Abandoning the canteen, Kevin leapt forward to help his friend. Jake had gripped his attacker in both hands and was trying to pry it off his face, but its teeth were sunk deep into the flesh of his cheek, anchoring it firmly in place. Drawing his hunting knife, Kevin swung the blade in an arc, directly toward the center of the creature's back.

_CRASH!_

The entire section of stairway in front of him buckled and collapsed in an explosion of rust and metal, taking both Jake and the little animal with it. The two plunged silently down the shaft, still locked in combat as they vanished into the large cloud of dust rising up from below.

"JAKE! NO!" screamed Kevin as he grabbed the railing and peered into the darkness. There was a muffled _thump_, and then nothing but the groans of unsteady metal beams. As the dust cleared, his friend's broken body slowly came back into view. Jake lay still and unmoving, sprawled across a large pile of rubble. His face was drenched in blood, as was his left leg. Kevin felt his stomach churn as he realized a jagged chunk of steel had plunged straight through the Jerkop's calf. A dark red pool was already beginning to spread beneath him.

Suddenly, horrifically, Jake began to move. His arm flopped limply at an angle usually reserved for double-jointed people. Kevin could see a white shard of bone protruding from his elbow.

"_Kevin…"_ choked the wounded Jerkop as blood bubbled from the corners of his mouth.

Paralysis and fear had Kevin firmly in their grasp. He couldn't move a muscle. Every ounce of his willpower was telling him to run down and help Jake, to move him away, to go get Steve and the others…to do _something_, _anything_. But all he could do was look down in horror as his friend gasped and coughed beneath him.

Then a new set of noises reached his ears. At first, they sounded like the squeaking of mice or rats, but Kevin quickly picked out individual words in the midst of all the distant chatter below.

_Oh, fuck me,_ he thought as he recognized the sounds.

"_Wosey!"_

"_Goo-gaa!"_

"_Nee!"_

"_Sonee!"_

"_Goo-goo!"_

First one, then three, then a dozen, then a whole crowd of pink and yellow chu larvae spilled from the mouths of the pipes below, converging on Jake's body with shrill cries of glee and excitement. As the injured Jerkop struggled and groaned in agony, a single Rosey toddled forward and sat down beside his impaled leg.

"_YAY!"_ it squealed happily, and sank its piranha-like teeth into the ragged flesh, ripping off a bloody chunk of exposed muscle.

"_EEEEAAAAAAARRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHH!"_ shrieked Jake as the feral swarm descended upon him with the enthusiasm of jackals who had just discovered an entire elephant carcass. Kevin let out a choking, strangled sob as he watched his friend vanish beneath a writhing sea of fuzzy bodies. A hand broke the surface for an instant, but a Sonee quickly leapt up and gnawed Jake's thumb off at the base. The hand shuddered and flopped back down. It was quickly absorbed into the frenzy.

Kevin couldn't watch any longer. Jake Linneman was done for. He had to get out of this death trap before more of the larvae decided to go for him instead. Wiping the tears from his face, he drew his pistol and staggered upright toward the door.

"SONEEEEEEE!"

A piercing pain shot through his leg. Kevin yelled and looked down to see one of the fuzzy yellow abominations biting at his jeans, its sharp white teeth shredding the denim to ribbons as it tried to get at the tender flesh beneath. Its fleshy pink armstubs were firmly wrapped around his boot.

Bracing himself against the railing, Kevin raised his other foot and brought it as hard as he could directly onto the little chu's head.

"NEE-"

The Sonee let out a shrieking cry of pain, but was quickly silenced when one hundred and sixty pounds of force crushed its entire skull like a tiny watermelon. Blood squirted out across the brown leather boot as Kevin stomped down again and again, smashing the creature to pieces between the floor grating with each frenzied blow. Finally, nothing remained except a few scraps of skin and a crushed green eyeball floating in a puddle of gore.

The thick pipe beside him began rattling up and down. Inside, he could hear more of the bloodthirsty chu larvae crawling towards him. Kevin kicked his way through the weakened metal door and broke into a panicked sprint down the adjacent sewer tunnel. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a Rosey jump out of the pipe opening. The little creature's skirt billowed open like a miniature parachute as she gently floated to the ground and began waddling after this new prey.

"Wosey!" she cried, and raised an armstub toward the fleeing Jerkop.

With a chorus of squeaks and cries, an avalanche of Sonees and Roseys poured out of the pipe and immediately set off after the lead Rosey. Their stunted legs were pathetically unsuited for chasing down fleeing victims, but Kevin had a feeling that they knew the layout of this sewer a whole lot more than he did. Steve, Kuri, Allie, and Sugar were on their own now, but at least they were together. Without Jake, Kevin's odds of survival had been drastically cut down.

He had to get up to the surface, and he had to do it fast.

**Thirty minutes later, CWCville sewers**

Kevin Shaw was well and truly lost.

For the last half hour, he had hurried down the tight, damp tunnels of the desolate CWCville sewer system as fast as he could, always keeping one eye on the darkness around him. The horrors that had devoured Jake were almost certainly still searching for fresh meat – even the Jerkop's entire body couldn't feed that large of a swarm.

There had to be a way out somewhere…a ladder or another stairwell or a manhole or…or _something_. He simply didn't know where to go, and worst of all, he had no way of remembering where he was. All the tunnels looked the same to him, and he didn't have the time or the energy to try and figure out his position. His bitten leg had stopped bleeding, but the Sonee's teeth had still inflicted deep cuts into his skin. Furthermore, Kevin didn't know what kinds of diseases or pathogens the creatures carried in their mouths. He had a feeling Jexis would want to take a good look at that wound when he got back.

_If _he got back.

A sudden clatter of metal echoed in the distance. Kevin jumped and turned toward the source of the noise, but saw nothing but the pipes and the concrete tunnel wall. Every sound spooked him now. His imagination was running wild: turning every shadow into a waiting Sonee or Rosey, amplifying the gentle drip of water into the patter of oversized sneakered feet, and making even a simple breeze feel like a furry face brushing against the back of his neck.

Not only was Kevin lost, he was actually starting to lose it too.

There had to be some way out. When Robert Chandler founded CWCville, he must have had enough sense to build access ladders and other points of entry into the sewer system to let the construction workers in. Now most of the ladders had rusted away, but it would be ludicrous to assume there was only a single one left intact.

_Rurururururururururr…_

Kevin stopped in his tracks as a rumbling noise grew louder and louder overhead, until it passed right above him. _A car!_ He had to be right below the streets now. Maybe he'd wandered all the way back to the slum district. Maybe he was even within walking distance of Slumberland! Once he got to the surface, he'd try to make his way back to the PVCC headquarters and call in some backup to save Steve, Kuri, and Allie. Zoey and Al were still there, and so was the Battle Bus…

The rumbling continued moving up ahead, punctuated by a loud hiss of exhaust. The vehicle, whatever it was, sounded big. Very, very big. It must have been a delivery truck, or something along those lines. Kevin crept forward silently, following the noise as best he could. It was hard to see anything in this dark, cramped environment, let alone keep track of a moving vehicle through sound alone…

There! Another rusty door lay set into the wall further up the tunnel. Nearly crying with relief, Kevin dashed over, pushed it open, and stepped out into…

"Whoa," he breathed as city light flooded in from outside, illuminating a huge and very run-down sewage treatment room. Large ruptured and rusty water tanks lay scattered about here and there, while still more piles of scrap metal and garbage crowded the once-open space. The floor was poured concrete, covered by a scattered layer of crumpled-up paper waste.

But what truly drew Kevin's attention was the large transport truck backing into the treatment plant from a ramp that presumably led to the surface. That must have been the vehicle he'd heard, but what was it doing, and more importantly, why was it here? Squinting as his eyes adjusted, Kevin could barely read the large yellow stenciled letters on the side of the truck's container.

**E**…**H**…**P**…**F**…

"_Shit!"_ Kevin gasped, and scurried for cover inside one of the stinking, mildew-filled water tanks. The horrific stench filled his nostrils immediately, but it was better than being zapped to death by Chandler's personal army. Through a hole in the side, he had a perfect view of the truck and the surrounding area. As long as he didn't draw any attention to himself, he should be fine.

As he watched with bated breath, the truck ground to a halt. Two Sonichus in full EHPF uniform flung open the cargo bay door and leapt down to the concrete, while another stepped out of the passenger seat. Kevin guessed there was still a driver as well. Killing them was out of the question; they had him outnumbered four to one and he still wasn't too confident about his pistol accuracy. Plus, he was sitting in an enclosed metallic space. One bolt of electricity, and he'd be fried like a wasp in a microwave.

The chus were talking amongst themselves now. Kevin leaned forward to listen, and thankfully, he could just make out their conversation over the rumbling of the truck.

"…lucky bastard. How many d'you think you made…let's just say…last six months?" asked the foremost officer.

The chu to his right let out a roar of laughter. "GodJesus, you never stop, do you? All right, lemme see if I can remember." He held up a gloved hand and began counting. "One, three, seven, thirteen, nine…you know what, I think it was about seventy-two if we count those three on the east side the other day. No _way_ they're walkin' away babyless, if y'all know what I mean."

The two Sonichus whistled and clapped their partner on the back.

"Good for you, man!" shouted the first. "Keep 'em coming!"

"I got an idea! Let's go find some more china after we finish feeding them," suggested the other chu. "Those Rosechus don't got anything better to do."

"Well come on then, you better help me if y'all wanna get laid tonight."

"No homo!" laughed the boasting one.

The Sonichus quickly formed a fireline from the inside of the bay to a patch of concrete nearby. Kevin squinted to see what they were unloading…

…and nearly threw up in his mouth when he realized what kind of cargo the truck had been carrying.

Bodies. Men and women, boys and girls as young as four…all as limp and lifeless as store mannequins, tossed roughly from chu to chu like they were bags of garbage instead of real human corpses. One by one, they were cast down into a small pile, stacked carelessly in a grotesque imitation of a burial mound.

Kevin hugged his knees to his chest and struggled to suppress the sheer red fury that was tearing a hole in his heart. Tears streamed unchecked from his eyes, soaking the collar of his shirt and his dirty, smudged jeans. All he could do was sit there and cry silently until he heard the truck's engine start up again. The vehicle rumbled away, leaving a black exhaust trail and a pile of dead citizens in its wake.

So this was where the vanished ones ended up. Now he knew what had happened to Billy, Laurie, and everyone else who had dared to cross Chandler. All murdered…executed and dumped here like worthless sacks of meat. All because they'd found the courage to stand up for the good of their city. All because they were _there_.

Once the noises had faded away, Kevin stumbled out of the tank. His eyes had turned glassy and red, and he seemed to be wandering in a zombielike state of disbelief, sorrow, and hatred. Step by step, he walked closer and closer until he'd reached the corpse pile. Kneeling beside the lifeless bodies, he drew in a single shaky breath as his gaze fell upon a pair of joined hands. He followed the arms to their owners, and realized with a shock that they were both men – a gay couple who must have chosen to die together rather than be split apart by Chandler's reeducation program. Beneath them, a little six-year-old girl lay rigid and cold in death, her eyes open and staring up at a ceiling she could not even see. A single electric scorch mark marred her pretty face.

Collateral damage.

Kevin twisted away and immediately vomited, heaving up a slimy mess of half-digested food onto the concrete. Another wave of nausea struck without warning, then another, and another, until he was just coughing up strings of mucus. A bitter hatred for Chandler and all his chus thundered through the Jerkop's skull, and quickly manifested itself as a single, powerful word.

_Kill._

Staggering to his feet, Kevin began looking around the room for a shovel, a can of gasoline, anything that would help give these people a proper burial or a quick cremation…

"Wosey."

Kevin stopped and turned to see a single Rosey clumsily making her way toward the pile of corpses, a hungry look in her green reptilian eyes. Behind her, a small group of other feral chus had found their way to the sewage treatment plant through various pipes and other access tunnels. All were waddling straight for their freshly delivered all-you-can-eat buffet.

Suddenly, everything made sense.

_After we finish feeding them...after we finish feeding them...feeding them...feeding them...feeding them..._

A soft giggle worked its way out of Kevin's mouth as the puzzle pieces fell into place. The giggle increased to a chuckle. The chuckle grew in intensity until it became a full-blown laugh, and before long, that laugh had quickly turned into a truly frightening noise usually reserved for the interior of an insane asylum. Madness gripped the young Jerkop as he reached for his hunting knife and slid it out of its sheath with a merciless grin.

_Kill._

Ignorant of Kevin's oncoming madness, the first Rosey reached the pile and immediately began chewing on a dead woman's cheek. Before she could swallow her first mouthful of flesh, Kevin snatched her up in one hand. With his other, he thrust the knife right between her eyes and twisted it around, hard, a full 180 degrees. The chu was dead before she even had time to scream.

The Jerkop hurled his victim's bleeding corpse into the nearest wall as hard as he could, laughing hysterically as the pink fuzzball exploded into a sticky mess of blood and organs. Dashing forward, he kicked a Sonee and decapitated it with a single powerful blow. Kevin watched its head sail away into the distance, trailing drops of blood as it spun through the air like a football.

The other chus recoiled, squeaking in fear and confusion as Kevin plunged further into their midst. The big hunting knife flashed from Sonee to Rosey to Sonee, slashing and stabbing each of the abominations in turn. A few wisely turned and headed back to the safety of their pipes and tunnels, while the rest continued on toward their goal of the food pile. To get there, though, they'd have to get past the murderous Jerkop.

And Kevin was not about to allow any of that.

"WOSEEEEEEY!" shrieked another of the female chus until Kevin picked her up and twisted her head off like the cap of a soda bottle. A torrent of blood poured out of the stump of her neck, spilling down over her soft fuzzy body. He tossed the headless feral away and speared another through the belly on the end of the knife. The Rosey cried and gasped as the Jerkop lifted both her and his weapon into the air, then tipped it forward. She slid off and fell, leaving a thick smear of blood on the shiny steel blade. Kevin stomped on her head just to be sure, flattening her skull against the concrete.

"Son…NEEEEE!"

_ZZZAP!_

Kevin winced in surprise as he felt a tiny shock prickling down the back of his leg. He turned and looked down to see a single Sonee standing two feet away with an armstub pointed right at him, its face all scrunched up with what had to be intense concentration. Kevin could have disemboweled it in half a second, but his berserk rage had given way to curiosity now. He wanted to know what exactly the feral had done to him.

As he watched, the Sonee's cheekspots flickered with sparks. A tiny bolt of energy erupted from its face and lanced straight down the outstretched limb, finally bursting into the air and bridging the gap between the tip of its armstub and Kevin's knee.

_ZZZAP!_

_Pathetic,_ Kevin thought as he grabbed the little chu and started carving its face apart.

"GOO-GOO! GOO-GOO! GOO-GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" it screamed as each new cut sliced open its skin and muscles to reveal the pale white sheen of bone beneath. Desperately, it tried to conjure a third spark, but Kevin quickly poked the knife into its cheekspot, piercing straight through the skin into the bioelectric organ itself.

_ZZZAP!_ The spark seared straight up to the knife's rubber grip and rebounded back into the Sonee's mutilated face. Kevin hurriedly dropped it as the feral shuddered and jerked like an epilepsy victim, its body gushing black smoke from every orifice…even its eyes. Finally, it let out a last moan of agony and lay still, its limbs still twitching as wayward bioelectricity coursed through them.

Unbelievably, the Sonee had just electrocuted itself.

_Could that work on their parents if we shot one in the face?_ wondered Kevin. He still didn't know how exactly these crimes against nature worked – at any stage of their lives. At the moment, however, he was getting a few good impromptu lessons in Sonee and Rosey anatomy.

And speaking of which…

"Wosey!" another feral cried from above. Kevin looked up to see that a single Rosey climbing out of an open ventilation shaft in the ceiling. Given her lack of fingers, she immediately slipped and fell, but her skirt spread out beneath her, preventing the feral from plummeting to a quick death. Like the world's smallest paratrooper, she angled herself towards Kevin's head, ready to sink her sharp little teeth into the soft flesh of his…

_Squish!_

_Crunch!_

"SEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY!" the Rosey screeched as the hunting knife's pointed tip skewered her from below, plunging its way up through her bottom until it embedded itself in her ribcage. Warm blood gushed over the hilt and onto the Jerkop's hands, coating his already-bloodied fingers in sticky red liquid. The impaled feral screamed and wept, writhing uselessly around the six inches of razor sharp metal that now rested uncomfortably inside her torso.

Kevin hastily took hold of her head and began sawing the blade up and down, cutting his way right out of her body.

"GOO-GEEEE! GOO-GEEEE! GOO-GEEEE! GOO-GEEE!" the chu cried with each excruciating stroke. Kevin heard her ribs splintering, her muscles tearing apart like crepe paper, her stomach and liver rupturing and bursting like tiny water balloons…

_Squish!_

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!"

The gleaming steel point of Kevin's knife erupted from the Rosey's belly like some ridiculous parody of the chestburster scene from _Alien_. As the Jerkop sliced her apart from the inside, her mutilated organs slopped out and dangled grotesquely from her split torso, dripping with blood and various juices. At last, her heart gave out.

Kevin - now firmly beyond the point of no return - never even felt a fraction of remorse at all the grisly murders he'd just committed. Disgust, certainly. If he hadn't been desensitized enough before watching Jake die, the corpse pile and the displays of unimaginable cruelty from Chandler and his vile creations had most certainly pushed him over the edge. They'd murdered his friend, and bloody retribution was now falling upon them.

Raising the dead Rosey in one hand, Kevin drew back his arm and hurled it as hard as he could directly into another Sonee, knocking the feral back about three feet. Its spine snapped audibly.

A bone crunched behind him. The Jerkop spun around and gutted a Sonee with a vicious slash, then stepped over the convulsing chu and dashed back to the corpse pile. About three of the little creatures had begun feeding on the outermost bodies, ripping off pieces of skin with their tiny teeth and filling the air with a chorus of "YAY!"s. Oblivious to the world, they indulged themselves greedily, stuffing their faces with fresh meat that their grandfather had indirectly killed for them.

They stood no chance against Kevin.

With a single crushing stomp, the Jerkop squashed the first Rosey to a pulp beneath his boot before she even knew what had happened. The remaining Sonee and Rosey tried to flee, but were both snatched up before they could run six inches. Kevin threw the male chu directly into a pile of jagged scrap metal, impaling it through its little body in three places. Gripping the last Rosey's belly fur, he heaved upward, tearing a huge patch of skin right off of her torso and revealing the muscles and organs beneath. Her skirt somehow stayed on.

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!" she screamed as Kevin knelt and began scrubbing the hard floor with her exposed belly, painting the concrete with strokes of dark red and tiny bits of flesh. Bit by bit, he was wearing her down to the bone.

"NEEEE!"

Kevin turned and raised his knife, but it was too late. The last thing he saw was a black-and-yellow blur hurtling through the air towards his…

_BANG!_ The Sonee exploded into a fountain of gore as a hail of buckshot shredded its body to pieces in mid-leap. Kevin yelled in shock and shielded his eyes with the back of his hand, wincing as slimy scraps of brain and organs pelted his face and arms. Another two blasts sounded from over near the ramp entrance, followed by a cacophony of panicked cries and footsteps as the little chus presumably fled this new destroyer.

When Kevin finally uncovered his face, he was no longer alone. A single woman with messy shoulder-length auburn hair, pale skin, and freckles stood a few feet away, sliding a handful of shells into the shotgun cradled in her arms. A steel baseball bat was tied sloppily across her back.

_Jake's shotgun. Jake's bat._

"Where'd you get those?" snarled Kevin as he drew his pistol and pointed it straight at her head.

The woman glanced up, shrugged, and resumed loading her weapon.

"There wasn't much left when I found him," she muttered, so softly that Kevin had to strain to make out her words. "And he wasn't using these. I'm guessing he was your friend or something?"

Kevin nodded and lowered the gun. This newcomer was just a salvager, and nothing more. She was no threat to him. "Yeah. Jake Linneman…that's his name."

"Bless him, he died the way no man should die," mused the woman in a distant-sounding tone as she approached him. "But you, what's your name, boy? How'd you come to be here on a Feeding Day?"

"I'm Kevin," said Kevin, trying his best not to grimace at his new friend's considerable stench. "We…Jake and I…we're with the PVCC resistance."

A lopsided smile spread across the stranger's freckled face. "I guess you'd be looking for a few friends of yours, then? Tall icy guy, flamer girl, Smurf girl, skunk-wolverine? Seen 'em all. Passed through the north tunnel thirty minutes ago."

"Wo…sey…"

Kevin looked down to see the sole surviving Rosey trying to crawl away, dragging her exposed intestines on the concrete and leaving a large red streak behind her. Raising his pistol, he pulled the trigger and blew her tiny brain right out of her skull. _BANG! _The chu flopped forward, twitched a few times, and quietly died.

"Where did they say they were going?" he asked as he stowed the gun.

The woman absent-mindedly started scratching her abdomen through a hole in her worn t-shirt. "They didn't. That tall guy saw me with your friend's stuff and tried to cut my head off with this weird metal boomerang thingy. I barely got outta there before they sent that mutant skunk after me. My name's Linda, by the way."

"Okay. What exactly do you do down here?"

"Salvaging, sometimes." Linda smirked at the mangled bodies of the chus she and Kevin had just slaughtered. "Sometimes hunting. Mostly both. Scrapland gets boring at night, and we all gotta eat."

Kevin was taken aback. "Scrapland? Where is it?"

Linda grinned. "Pretty damn close. We're standing right underneath it." She stepped past him, selected a mostly intact Rosey, and set off up the concrete slope, holding the corpse by its feet. "Come on."

"What exactly _is_ Scrapland?" asked Kevin as he hurried after his new friend.

"Pretty much the last place any sane person'd wanna live in." Linda shucked off the Rosey's skirt and bow and tossed them aside without a second thought. "'Course, nobody's sane no more. We used to live in a big shantytown up top – that was before the Sparkies started dumping all their babies into the sewers. Ferals come up once in a while to play in the old park west of here. Tammy likes to play with 'em too. Her favorite game's called Kick-a-Chu."

"Ah." Kevin realized the sort of "play" the woman was talking about. "Who's Tammy?"

"My little sister. Looked after her since Mom and Dad and my two brothers and my other sister went away to visit Uncle Christian."

The Jerkop felt a twinge of pity for this poor homeless woman. Was there no end? How many more lives did Chandler have to ruin before the city just up and died like it had been threatening to do for years now?

Kevin stopped and glanced over his shoulder. He'd almost forgotten.

"What about the bodies?"

Linda shook her head. "No use. Every day, they bring more. Every day, the babies get to eat more. Every day, their parents make more eggs. No matter what you do, there'll always be more. I'm sorry, kid, but it's the truth."

"No," the Jerkop replied with a frown. "We have to."

They'd reached the top of the ramp by now, and Kevin could finally see where this place had gotten its name. Part shanty town, part junkyard, and part construction site, Scrapland had obviously been a large amusement park in a previous life, but its history under Robert Chandler was swept aside all the same when his son turned this part of CWCville into the abandoned zone. Half a Ferris wheel towered above the entire area, its meshwork of steel beams twisted and rusting beneath its own weight. There had used to be a roller coaster stretching around the length of the park, but now the decrepit tracks served as a sort of border for Scrapland. Various other rides and attractions lay ruined and in pieces everywhere Kevin looked. The only thing missing, oddly enough, was the crowd of hobos he'd imagined lived around Linda.

"Aren't there any others here?" he asked.

"There used to be," replied the woman as she led him into Scrapland. "Me and Tammy, we're all that's left. Everyone else either moved away, or else the ferals got 'em."

Each new revelation was another thunderbolt in Kevin's brain. The whole despicable cycle was clear to him now. It was a win-win situation for Chandler. The adult chus kept their offspring out of the more populated areas of CWCville by feeding them regular offerings of executed prisoners and the occasional hobo that wandered into their midst. The people of CWCville remained unaware of the potential danger beneath their feet, the Sonees and Roseys were happy and full, and the mayor himself had a perfect way to get rid of anyone who opposed him.

The idea made Kevin feel like throwing up all over again.

Linda led him over a pile of rubble toward what could only be described as a scrap metal cave. A deep channel had been dug in the ground and covered with a makeshift shield of steel beams and other sheet metal, all sloppily welded together. Four fire barrels burned around the structure, illuminating the surrounding area with their warm flickering light. It was dark inside Linda's home, but Kevin could see a few pieces of furniture…also all crafted from trash and salvage. Well, if nothing else, the woman was certainly a resourceful character.

"Tammy?" Linda called out. "Tammy, we've got company!"

"Damn right you do." Steve Morrison sidestepped out into the open from behind a collapsed cotton candy stand, pushing a young woman with very long auburn hair - the same color as Linda's – ahead of him. His razor-sharp kukri was pressed close to her throat. With his other hand, the Jerkop squad leader aimed his Colt Python at the older homeless woman. "Put that shotgun down and step away from my squadmate."

"Linda!" cried Tammy as she struggled to put a few more millimeters between her neck and the curved blade. "Linda, help me!"

"LET HER GO!" roared Linda, and raised the shotgun.

Steve cocked his revolver. "You want to think about telling us where you got those weapons and why you're traveling with one of my Jerkops?"

"You want to think about letting my sister go and getting the hell away from our house?" snapped Linda.

Steve laughed coldly. "House? Lady, it's a fucking cave. You could've saved yourself a whole lot of trouble if you'd just told us what you were doing instead of running away. Now you've pushed me past the point where I play nicely." He drew Tammy in even closer to the kukri's edge, enough to leave a tiny indentation in the skin of her neck. "Those two girls with me? They're both pointing guns at your head right now. As I said, drop the shotgun."

"Do it," advised Kevin.

Linda knew a hopeless situation when she saw it. She grudgingly placed Jake's shotgun on the ground. Kevin snatched it up and hurried to Steve's side.

"You all right?" growled the Jerkop as he released his grip on Tammy and pushed her away. The woman stumbled forward and immediately dashed forward to hug her sister.

"Jake's dead." Kevin's voice was heavy with guilt. "It's my fault. I wasn't watching him when he…"

"No. It is _not_ your fault," Steve replied angrily. "You don't say things like that in my squad. I won't have you destroying yourself over something you couldn't control." He sheathed his kukri. "I know Jake was your friend. He was a good soldier, too. You can tell Al and I what happened to him once we get back for the debriefing. For now, you hang onto that shotgun. We've got a long way to go and a lot of chu spawn to kill before we're in the clear."

"The EHPF…" Kevin felt a chill race down his spine. Did Steve even know about the dumping ground…about the piles of bodies…about the sickening Feeding Day ritual? "I saw…they were…"

The Jerkop's eyes narrowed to blue slits. "You saw the truth. Now you know why we have to kill them all."

"How long?" asked Kevin. He was still having a hard time believing something like this could have been going on for what had to be at least several years. "How long have they been-"

Steve ignored his question. "Later. Go regroup with the others. I'll handle this. Sugar, clear!"

The honey badger leapt out of a small burrow in a nearby mound of dirt and trotted over to nuzzle her master's leg. Kevin hadn't noticed her at all – Sugar must have been trained to set traps and conceal herself.

"Kevin!"

Allie and Kuri emerged from their respective hiding places and sprinted over to greet their newly-returned comrade. Kevin was surprised to see that both girls had accumulated a fair share of scratches and bruises, as well as a few unique battle markings. Kuri's teal-painted skin was now soiled with a sizable number of bloodstains that most likely hadn't come from her. One sleeve of her sweatshirt had been shredded up to the shoulder, leaving her left arm and part of her t-shirt exposed. Allie, on the other hand, looked like she was wearing blackface. Prolonged use of her flamethrower had given most of her body and clothes a dark coating of soot. Tear streaks ran down her face; she'd obviously been crying, most likely after the squad found Jake…

"Good to see you in one piece." Kuri grinned and gave him a welcoming pat on the shoulder. "You missed all the fun."

"Not quite," gasped Kevin as Allie slammed into him with another of her trademark bear hugs. "Ow! Hey, take it easy – you're gonna break my spine one of these days."

"Jake…" The girl sounded as if she were holding back a scream of uncontrollable rage. "What…what happened?"

"They set us up, Allie." Kevin returned the hug, pulling her close and running his fingers through her hair comfortingly. Seeing what he'd been through that night, it was the best possible thing anyone could have done for him. "We walked into their trap, and they…then they killed him. I'm so sorry, Allie, I'm so sorry…"

"We'll kill a hundred chus for him," growled Allie, and fixed his eyes with her own blistering gaze. "A thousand. You and me and Matt. We'll kill them all."

"And what about me?" Kuri spoke up indignantly. "They killed my parents. They killed my brother and my sister. Don't forget, Jake was my friend too, and if you two think I'm gonna let you hog all the hoglets…"

"That's enough," ordered Steve as he rejoined the group with Sugar in tow. "I've straightened things out with our new friends here," he gestured to Linda and Tammy, "and they seem to know the chu concentration patterns pretty well. We're only a few blocks away from a place called McIntire Park – it was scheduled to be replaced with a YMCA, but Chandler overturned the building permit for some reason. There's a playground there, an old concert stage, a chalkboard wall…"

"Just tell us how many there are," demanded Allie impatiently.

Steve shot her a chilling smile. "According to them, enough to give us a fair bit of headway on avenging Jake."

"That's good enough for me," added Kuri, and removed her scrap-forged tekko-kagi from her belt. Looping the straps around her wrist and forearm, she tilted the weapon and watched the firelight glinting off its three steel claws. "Let's do this."

"Wouldn't have it any other way," replied Steve, and set off across Scrapland toward the aforementioned park. Sugar sniffed the air, growled, and quickly took the lead. Kuri grinned in anticipation at Kevin and Allie, licked her lips, then hurried after her squad leader.

Kevin waved a quick goodbye to Linda and Tammy as he and Allie turned and followed suit.

"Remember, PVCC!" he yelled. "Find us if you want in! Slum district!"

"We're in! See you soon, Kevin!" called Linda, and waved back before ushering Tammy down into the safety of their cave.

"Well, this is it. Bet you're ready for payback." said Allie. "I sure as hell am."

Kevin gritted his teeth. "I just watched one of my best friends die right in front of me. I saw the EHPF dumping bodies in the sewer for their children to eat. I killed a dozen Sonees and Roseys down there tonight." The pained grimace transformed into a sadistic smile. "I've never been _more_ ready for payback, Allie. Now let's show them what they get when they fuck with the Honey Badgers."

**Ten minutes later, CWCville abandoned zone**

The maze of uninhabited buildings loomed above Kevin's head like monoliths of crumbling brick, each one more disturbing than the last. All around him were signs of a once-thriving section of the city, left to rot through the ignorance and irresponsibility of the man who was supposed to be making sure things like this didn't happen. He hadn't seen a single other person after leaving Linda back in Scrapland…not even a flaming barrel or a scrap shelter.

The Honey Badgers were walking right into the heart of the abandoned zone…the prime hunting ground for CWCville's feral Sonee and Rosey population.

The squad had been making their way down a network of alleyways, trying their hardest to stay off the roads. Even though the abandoned zone rarely saw any traffic apart from the occasional lost tourist, Steve insisted they keep to the side passages as much as possible to avoid any unnecessary encounters with the EHPF. Judging from all the sirens in the distance, the chu police were out in force tonight - most likely dispatched in response to some of the other Jerkop squads' misdemeanors. Operation Rift wasn't _entirely_ about larval extermination, after all.

Steve had gleaned a fair amount of valuable information concerning their targets from his discussion with Linda and Tammy…after he'd smoothed out the unpleasant feelings between him and them, of course. The two women were fairly experienced in the art of chu-hunting, and they'd been more than happy to share a few of their most effective strategies with the Jerkop.

According to what he'd told Kevin, Kuri, and Allie, the ferals were nocturnal; they slept during the day and only ventured out of the sewers at night to scavenge for small prey, garbage, and the occasional hobo. They almost always traveled in packs for companionship and protection, and had even learned to coordinate simple attacks like the one that had led to Jake's death. They weren't exactly any smarter than their homebred brethren, but certainly more experienced and able to act on instinct.

Being Sonees and Roseys, they were naturally attracted to things like playgrounds, candy, cookies, music, _Mary Poppins_, other chus, toys and games, soft pillows, and other similar items one would normally associate with the most stereotypical of babies. The sole difference between ferals and homebreds was simple – a naturally-ingrained defensive "cutesy" demeanor that vanished if they were denied the benefits of a pampered childhood for an extended period of time. Take away these luxuries, and a very different creature emerged to fill the soft fuzzy shell of a homeless larva.

This was why they were headed for McIntire Park – to catch the ferals completely off guard in an open environment. Down in the sewers, the Honey Badgers had been easy prey in unfamiliar territory, but in the streets of CWCville, they now took on the role of predators.

"Why did we even go through the sewers in the first place?" muttered Allie as she fiddled with the fuel intake valve on Trogdor the Burninator. Kevin had been wondering the same thing since the attack, and he was pretty sure Kuri was, as well.

"Al and I went on recon missions through those tunnels dozens of times," replied Steve, "back in the days when Scrapland was still full of hobos. There weren't that many ferals back then…we just assumed a few Sonees and Roseys fell or wandered down manholes and their parents just forgot about them. We thought they'd just starve to death, since there wasn't enough food for them to evolve and they were too young to breed. Of course, when we learned Chandler was purposely displacing all the unwanted larvae into the sewers…"

"You didn't answer my question," continued Allie.

Steve sighed. "I…I made a mistake, and I wasn't thinking straight." He glanced over his shoulder at Kevin. "I shouldn't have sent you and Jake out on your own. I thought you'd be safe…that there weren't so many ferals around the area. But I was wrong. They're expanding towards the slum district. I underestimated them, and it cost me both a good soldier and a good friend."

Kevin was genuinely surprised. Was this actual remorse from Steve Morrison? The man played both of his roles as a comrade and a drill sergeant very well, but up until now, he'd never sounded truly _sad_. Then again, Kevin had never seen Steve lose a squadmate before, either. How many unknown soldiers had served in the Honey Badgers, and more importantly, how many had lost their lives under his command?

"Hey, is this it?" asked Kuri from the end of the alley.

Kevin hurried forward to see what she was talking about. Beyond the next street, a large flat area of overgrown grass and weeds stretched out for nearly a full square block. Several smashed picnic tables and benches were scattered here and there along a trampled dirt pathway, and there might have once been trees around a small pond on the northern side. Without proper care and maintenance, the former were now stumps and the latter had dried up into a patch of mud. Near the entrance to the park, Kevin could see a dilapidated gazebo and a large painted sign that displayed **MCINTIRE PARK** in faded pastel colors. Further down the path was a pile of rubble that had probably once been the concert stage Steve mentioned earlier.

But what really piqued Kevin's interest was the playground in the distance…or more specifically, the cluster of tiny pink and yellow blobs moving around inside it.

"Yes, Kuri. We're here." Steve patted her on the shoulder. "McIntire Park. Scope it out for me, would you?"

"Gladly," replied the teal-painted Jerkop as she shrugged off her backpack and withdrew a pair of binoculars from within. Nick might have been the better long-range scout, but Kuri Tatsuno was a born hunter. She'd lived on Mt. Coronet for years with nothing more than a Lunatone, a few survival supplies, and her clothes. Tracking prey was her specialty.

"Hmm…" she murmured, scanning the various play structures and silently marking down the targets in her head. "I count fifteen or sixteen…no, make that twenty…twenty-five. Probably a few out of sight and one or two more outside the killzone."

Steve stroked his mustache. "Excellent. Kuri, you're my backup. I'll be the bait. Apparently, these chus like to play a certain game that our friends back in Scrapland were kind enough to teach me."

Kuri giggled. "I'm in. Don't take too long."

"Have I ever?" Steve looked up at the two other Jerkops and smiled. "Right. Kuri's in charge while I'm drawing them out, so don't do anything until she gives the word. Understood?"

Kevin and Allie nodded simultaneously.

"Good. Second rule of chu baiting: do not disturb the master at work or question his methods," continued Steve as he drew his kukri and gave it a few practice swings. "I believe in teaching by example, and if all goes well, you two are about to get one hell of a lesson tonight. He rolled his head from side to side, audibly cracking the tendons in his neck. "So let's get right to the fun part. Watch and learn."

The Honey Badgers quietly moved across the street and ducked into the long grass covering McIntire Park. Kevin could hardly see a thing inside the tall field, but judging by the growing sounds of laughter and cries of "YAY!", they were slowly making their way in the right direction towards the playground where the little chus were busy frolicking. He zeroed in on Allie and followed close behind her so as not to get lost in the grass.

Up ahead, Steve had simply given up trying to push through all the giant weeds and spiky thistles that covered McIntire Park, and was now hacking out a path using his kukri. Sugar trotted after him, stopping once every few seconds to shake off the clumps of cut grass that had become tangled up in her sleek fur. Kuri wisely stayed a good five feet away, no doubt remembering the many embarrassing injuries the honey badger had heaped upon her during the infamous training process she and Nick had put Sugar through.

Finally, Steve stopped and held up his fist in a _wait _gesture. "Okay, this is it. Remember the plan." He reeled in Sugar and petted her behind her ears before turning back to the squad. "Keep quiet, stay low, and watch my back."

"Go get 'em, tiger," urged Kuri.

Steve rose to his feet and stepped right through the grass into the open. As soon as Sugar smelled the familiar scent of chu larvae, she began bristling up and growling softly. Her muscles tensed, and for a moment, it looked as if she was about to charge forward and start mauling Sonees and Roseys left and right.

"Sugar…safety on," Steve ordered under his breath. He slipped the kukri back into the curved sheath on his shoulder, safely concealing the wicked blade. At his feet, the honey badger obediently calmed down and grew silent. She knew every one of Steve's commands by heart, having learned them over the four years she'd served in the PVCC. To the ferals, she would most likely appear to be nothing more than a big stripy lovable dog, who only wanted to play and run around with them.

Not that the chus had noticed her or Steve, anyway. Kevin, Allie, and Kuri all inched forward, side by side, to the edge of the long grass for a better view. The large group of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon larvae appeared to be evenly mixed by gender. There were about thirty in total: all cavorting on the playground equipment, zipping gleefully down the slide one by one, attempting to push each other on the swings with their armstubs, digging and playing in the sandbox, or else running aimlessly in circles around the central play structure. A small group had gathered beneath the teeter-totter, and its members were now unsuccessfully trying to climb up onto the seats. They were far too short and much too clumsy to even get on, yet still the little beasts persisted.

Over in the picnic area, more ferals had pushed over a wastebasket and were now rooting through it like stunted pink and yellow raccoons, trying to scavenge whatever leftovers they could. A single tiny Rosey sat on the ground beside the fallen can, sucking on an ancient half-eaten lollipop with audible squeals of delight. Nearby, a Sonee had somehow trapped itself – all but its blue sneakered feet - inside a bag of Doritos and was now stumbling around, trying to free itself.

Kevin choked back laughter as the walking chip bag slammed into the side of the garbage can with a hollow metallic _thud_ and fell over onto its back, its feet flailing uselessly in the air. It was only now that he truly realized just how utterly pathetic they were outside of their subterranean habitat. Under the street, they'd been a pack of merciless hunters, but in this exposed environment, they were nothing less than the absolute easiest creatures in the world to kill.

Steve approached the struggling hoglet, smiling kindly as he knelt down and gently pulled the Dorito bag off of its head. Taking care not to make any sudden movements, he reached out a hand toward the feral and beckoned to it.

"There, there," he said in an alarmingly tender voice. "It's okay, little guy. The big scary bag's all gone now. Come on, I'm not gonna hurt you. It's okay. Come on."

"Goo-goo." The Sonee looked from Steve's outstretched fingers to his face, wondering who the newcomer could possibly be. This person couldn't possibly be one of those other big meanies who kicked his friends and poked them with shiny toys and turned their fur all red and made them go to sleep forever. It was _nice_. It had saved him from the scary darkness! It _loved_ him.

"Sonee!" squeaked the little chu, and waddled forward to hug his new best friend.

The big hand shot forward and closed around the creature's fuzzy torso, easily lifting it up off the ground. The Sonee giggled and squealed with glee as Steve swung it around and around in circles, all the while making airplane noises with his mouth.

"Brbrbrbrrbrbrneeoooowwww!"

"WHEEEEEEEE!"

"What's he doing?" Kevin whispered.

"Just wait. He always likes to draw in the others," Kuri replied absent-mindedly, her eyes focused on the spinning Jerkop and his new playmate.

"SONEE! SONEE!" giggled the Sonee. "WHEE! YAY!"

Across the playground, the other hoglets had finally noticed just how much fun their friend was having. They quickly stopped whatever they were doing and shuffled over to watch the show. Before long, most if not all of the playground's occupants were clustered together in a big group. A few waddled right up to Sugar and began prodding and petting her with their little armstubs as she fought to keep herself from breaking loose and disemboweling the entire crowd then and there. Kevin imagined that if the honey badger could speak, she would probably be screaming in disgust and swearing at the top of her lungs right about now.

Steve (who must have been incredibly dizzy by this point) kept whirling around and around like a living, breathing carnival ride. The airborne Sonee, on the other hand, was having the time of its life. Below, the crowd of pink and yellow ferals wandered closer and closer, eager to have their turn at this new game. They'd grown excited now, hopping up and down on their stumpy feet like a pack of retarded rabbits.

"Wosey!"

"Goo-goo!"

"Sonee!"

"Wosey!"

"Goo-gaa!"

"YAY!"

Kevin could hear their nauseating little voices growing louder and louder every time the Sonee soared over their heads. Steve's performance was working them into a frenzy. Beside him, Kuri rose to one knee and tensed herself for action.

"Game time," she chuckled, and readied her tekko-kagi. "Watch this."

Allie quickly unbuckled Trogdor the Burninator and set the flamethrower down gently in the grass where she could easily locate it again. Drawing her knife and pistol, she gave Kevin a firm nudge on the shoulder. "Come on, get ready."

Kevin immediately reached for his hunting knife. Shooting the ferals just wasn't as much fun as the close range alternative – he knew at least that much from experience. If he and Allie ever hoped to properly avenge Jake, they'd have to make sure that every chu they killed died in as much agony as possible, and until the larvae decided to evolve kneecaps, there wasn't much a bullet could do that a blade could do better, slower, and _far_ more painfully.

Outside in the open, Steve slowed down and staggered dramatically from side to side, his head still spinning from the "airplane ride." The Sonee in his hand made a little "aww" noise, clearly disappointed that the flying game had ended.

"Sonee," it whined, tugging at Steve's fingers with its armstubs. "Sonee!"

"What did you say?" The Jerkop's voice suddenly turned as cold as winter frost. "Say that again, you little bastard."

The Sonee drew back in surprise. "Nee?"

"I said…" Steve raised the creature up to his face and stared right into its vapid green eyes with a gaze that could have cut steel. "Say. That. Again. You. Little. Bastard."

"S-S-Sonee?" it asked tentatively.

Steve held out his captive at arm's length and nodded understandingly. "I get it. You liked the flying game, right?"

"YAY!" The Sonee clapped its armstubs together in delight. More flying? This was going to be the best day _ever_!

"Well, it just so happens that I know another flying game." A sadistic grin spread across the Jerkop's face. "I just learned how to play it tonight. It's called 'Kick-a-Chu.'"

The hand opened. The Sonee dropped like a plump yellow stone.

Steve's steel-toed boot rushed up to meet it.

_CRUNCH!_

The crowd of ferals screamed in terror as the broken corpse of what had once been their playmate sailed away through the air and smashed against the big sign next to the park. The Sonee burst open like a ripe tomato, splattering bloody entrails all over the painted wood. It hung there for a couple of seconds and slid down, leaving a thick red streak all the way from the center of the sign to the ground.

A flash of steel, and Steve's kukri was out and in his hand.

"Who's next?" he snarled, raising the curved blade.

Wailing and crying, the Sonees and Roseys instantly turned and made a beeline for the nearest shelter they could see. Unfortunately for them, that "shelter" was only the McIntire Park playground.

"Keep them inside the perimeter!" shouted the Jerkop as he dashed after the fleeing ferals. "Everyone move in! Sugar! SAFETY OFF!"

"GrrrRAAOWWRRR!" roared the honey badger, and shot forward like a guided missile with fur and teeth. In less than three seconds, she'd torn a Rosey into four bloody chunks and was now in the process of ripping a Sonee's head off with her powerful jaws. Caught between two equally painful rows of razor-sharp teeth, the chu could only kick helplessly and shriek until his fat little body fell away with a squishy popping sound. Sugar crunched down hard and sucked out her victim's brain through its skull like a human enjoying a peanut butter-filled pretzel. Spitting out a slimy mess of bone shards and indigestible cartilage, she padded over to the decapitated Sonee's still-twitching body and began messily chowing down on its innards.

"Okay, we're in business! Go! Go!" Kuri leapt up and ran to head off the herd. Kevin and Allie glanced at each other, then followed suit.

Inside the playground, Steve slid to a halt as he noticed a Rosey trying to pull herself up a ladder to the apparent safety of the big play structure. She had figured out a way to climb by wrapping her arms around each rung, then heaving herself up at a snail's pace. Steve observed this pathetic attempt for a few moments, then sliced her left armstub off at the shoulder. The big Nepalese knife neatly cleaved through skin, fat, meat, and bone in one swing, leaving the small pink creature dangling by one rudimentary "hand". Another cut opened her skirt from waist to hem. Steve caught the piece of torn cloth as it fluttered down and promptly tore it in half. There would be no parachute to save _this_ Rosey.

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYY!" the dangling chu shrieked as she fought to keep from slipping. Her static cling could only keep her attached so long. Big fat drops of blood fell and splashed on the wood chips below, painting them a glistening dark red. She had no skirt now, and if she let go, she would fall to her death. If she tried to hang on any longer, she would bleed to death.

In the end, it was Steve who made the decision for her. Pressing the razor edge of his kukri against the very tip of her remaining armstub, he began sawing back and forth ever so carefully, taking off only the tiniest bits of flesh with each stroke.

"!" bawled the dangling Rosey as the cold steel bit deeper and deeper. She couldn't let go now – the knife had her pinned to the ladder rung. All she could do was cry, struggle, and wait for the end.

Finally, Steve sawed through the last strip of skin connecting his victim to the end of her armstub. With a pitiful scream, the feral Rosey plunged earthward…only to be met by the four-inch wood chip that the Jerkop had propped up beneath her. The jagged spear plunged straight into her stomach, impaling her like a punji stick. A thick dark stain quickly spread across her belly and began soaking into her fur as she squirmed and twisted – nothing more than an insect on a pin.

Steve turned and left the Rosey to die a slow and agonizing death. It would take at least another five minutes for her to bleed out. Besides, he hadn't even _started_ with the little freaks yet.

Over by the swings, a Sonee and Rosey broke and ran…or rather, toddled…for the safety of the grass, leaving the rest of their comrades behind to face their destroyer and his striped hellhound. They hadn't gone two yards before Kuri burst out of the field like a pale blue she-devil and fell upon them with a diabolical laugh. Snatching up a chu in each hand like a pair of wriggling fuzzy cymbals, she drew her arms apart and slammed them together in the most unspeakably brutal clap of all time.

_CRUNCH! SQUISH!_

Blood and crushed organs squirted between her fingers as the Sonee and Rosey were instantly pulverized, fused into a grisly mess of gore, shattered bone, and yellow-pink skin. Kuri squeezed her hands together tightly like a car compacter and was rewarded with four faint _pop_s from within. Two dislodged pairs of glassy green eyeballs burst out of the dripping flesh-ball and fell away into the blood-soaked grass, where they were quickly crushed one by one beneath the Jerkop's boots.

Heaving the pair of mangled corpses away into the field, Kuri leaned down and disgustedly wiped her dripping hands on her jeans as she strolled toward the playground. She made a mental note to bring a pair of gloves on the next patrol. On the other hand, her skin was probably more red than blue now, seeing as how the impact of her two victims had sprayed a thick mess of blood all over her face.

In the span of a single minute, the McIntire Park playground had quickly fallen into a state of utter panic. Sonees and Roseys huddled together inside the big play structure, under the teeter-totter, in the sandbox, and even under piles of trash in the garbage can. Their diminutive brains weren't designed to handle stress very well, which made them all the more dangerous when they had the advantage of numbers and all the more vulnerable when their friends and playmates were being slaughtered all around them.

For Steve Morrison, it might as well have been an all-you-can-kill buffet. The Jerkop sauntered up and down the length of the playground casually, stroking his mustache as he perused the plentiful selection of waiting victims.

"Hmmm," he pondered aloud, peering through the darkness at five pairs of tiny, frightened eyes. "Maybe…you? Or maybe…you? Or maybe…GOTCHA!" he yelled, falling to one knee and grabbing a fat little Sonee from beneath the pile of wood chips it was trying to bury itself in. The pudgy chu wailed as Steve cruelly kicked over its hiding place and hurried across the playground to a picnic table. He sat down and placed his new victim on the wooden surface.

"Ooh, you're a chubby one," he taunted, pricking the hoglet's belly with the tip of his knife. It squealed and sobbed as a small trickle of blood leaked out. "Tell you what…I'm going to help you lose a few pounds for swimsuit season. You're gonna have all the china in CWCville after the Roseys get a look at you. So what do you say, fatty?"

The plump Sonee struggled to its feet and tried to waddle away, leaving a walnut-sized turd where it had been sitting.

"Now look what you did," said Steve in mock disappointment. "I think I'll call you Chris-Chan." He whacked Chris-Chan in the face with the kukri's wide blade, breaking the Sonee's nose and knocking it flat on its back. "Nurse, prep the patient for surgery."

The Jerkop stood up and walked back to the ladder. The impaled, armless Rosey lay twitching in the wood chips, barely clinging to life as a froth of blood slowly bubbled from her mouth. Steve knelt down, picked her up, and carried her back to his makeshift operating table.

"Sorry about that, Chris-Chan. Nurse was busy reading. Guess which book."

"Goo-gaa…Soneeeeeeee…"

"That's right, _A Farewell to Arms_. Sorry, that was a _terrible_ joke." Steve chuckled and swung his kukri down, shearing right through the Rosey's waist and embedding the blade a full half inch into the wooden plank. Her ragged skirt and the lower half of her body fell away from her torso, trailing intestines and a spurt of blood. Wasting no time, Steve reached into the body cavity and ripped out a twisted mass of ribs and organs, essentially turning the chu into a grotesque puppet. Shoving a much larger stick up into her hollowed-out torso, he placed the whole scarecrow-like invention beside the dazed Sonee and started speaking for it like a ventriloquist. _"Oh, Doctor Stee-eve, we're ready for you!"_

With a final gasp, the Rosey shuddered and died.

"Excellent," said Steve. "Nurse, hand me my scalpel."

"_Yes, Doctor,"_ said Steve, passing himself the kukri.

"Now our best course of action would be to make three sizable incisions…here, here, and here," said Steve, poking Chris-Chan's flabby gut in three different places. The Sonee let out three more screams of pain as the sharp point pierced its skin. "Then we'll simply extract the excess fat."

"_Sounds like a plan, Doctor,"_ said Steve.

"Indeed," said Steve. "Shall we, Nurse?"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" shrieked the Sonee as the kukri entered its belly and slit it wide open with all the ease of a jacket being unzipped. Writhing and wailing in agony, it hardly noticed as Steve peeled back a large flap of skin and began scraping away the yellow adipose tissue beneath the surface. Twice more the knife plunged down and twice more Steve performed the same horrific operation. By the time he'd finished extracting the excess fat, Chris-Chan's mutilated torso had shrunk to the size of a normal Sonee's, and a quivering pile of bloodied fatty tissue lay beside it. Unfortunately for Steve, the feral had also crashed into slumber…or, in this case, unconsciousness. The sheer amount of pain and panic it had endured during its "surgery" had caused it to pass out.

"We're losing him!" the Jerkop yelled, and knocked the scarecrow Rosey right off the table with a single dramatic sweep of his arm. "Dammit, Chris-Chan, don't you die on me! Nurse! Get me the defibrillator, stat!" He placed his hands flat, one over the other, on the dying Sonee's chest. "CLEAR!"

Steve pushed down, hard. The unconscious infant exploded beneath his palms, spraying its insides all over the picnic table as if it had been some kind of water balloon packed with meat and blood. The tiny skull crunched, and soon pinky-grey pieces of brain were mixing together with the flattened mess that covered most of the table's surface.

"Time of death, oh-now-hundred hours," Steve muttered solemnly as he rose to his feet and plucked a few bone shards out from between his fingers. "Next!"

Kevin didn't know whether to be shocked, disgusted, terrified, or impressed. Maybe a bit of all four. Steve was, without a doubt, the most disturbingly creative Jerkop he'd ever met in the entire PVCC, although he had to admit that Kuri was doing well enough on her own end. She'd wound the chain of one of the swings around a Rosey, lashing it to the crossbar at the top of the swing set. When she was satisfied with her handiwork, she grabbed the attached seat and pulled it down, hard. The contracting chain literally squished the creature to bits, sending body parts and burst organs raining down on her from above.

"Come on, Kevin!" she called, waving through the red mist that surrounded her.

"There's a bunch still inside," Steve hinted, nodding toward the large structure in the center of the playground. "Go nuts."

Kevin shook his head to clear it and immediately snapped out of his observation state. Unless he started stepping up his game, Steve, Kuri, Allie, and Sugar were going to kill all the hoglets themselves.

Readying the big hunting knife, he stepped forward and entered the playground. The feral chus immediately pressed themselves as far back against the plastic-coated steel bars as they could. One Rosey screamed and made for the slide, perhaps thinking she might make a quick exit down the slippery plastic chute. It might have worked, too, had she not stupidly made her presence known to Steve.

As she jumped in and desperately pushed herself forward, the Jerkop's kukri burst through the center of the slide, its sharpened edge pointed directly between her rapidly-approaching legs. The little creature struggled to slow herself down, pinwheeling her armstubs uselessly in the air, but there was nothing she could do – gravity was in control now.

"WOSEEEEEEEY!"

The Rosey slammed into the blade at full speed, crotch first. The impact didn't _quite_ bisect her…the knife only stopped when it had cut halfway through her ribcage, splitting her lungs and heart.

"Damn." Steve peeked out from beneath the slide, surveyed his handiwork, and shook his head in disappointment. "They never go all the way through." He reached up and yanked out the kukri, letting the clothespin Rosey slide the rest of the way down on a trail of her own blood. Her own intestines had spilled out of the rift where her legs joined the rest of her body and now hung free like pinkish-blue ropes.

Kevin walked up to the play structure and reached through the bars without a second thought. A Sonee tried to bat his fingers away with its armstubs, while another feral actually attempted to bite him. Fortunately, this one was far younger than the chus he'd seen in the sewers. Had it been just a few weeks older, it might have been able to pierce the Jerkop's skin. The Sonee's toothless jaws snapped and nibbled at the tip of his thumb, dealing about as much damage as a very light pinch.

"Gmmph-gmmmph," it mumbled around the thick finger in its mouth.

Kevin had had enough. All of his curiosity was long gone by now, replaced only by irritation and vengeance. Clenching his hand into a fist, he drew back his arm and lashed out, punching the feral dead center in the face. The Sonee reeled back with a yelp of pain, but Kevin lunged forward before it could get too far away. Grabbing the stunned chu around its torso, he withdrew his hand back through the bars.

"Goo-gooooOOIIEEEEEEE-" _CRUNCH!_ The Sonee's head snapped forward as its spine shattered instantly. The chubby little body – too big to fit between the painted steel bars - folded inward as Kevin pulled it right through the side of the play structure. By the time he'd wrenched it free, the feral resembled nothing more than a crumpled and crushed doll. A quarter inch of bloody bone protruded from its shoulders where its neck had snapped, and the head now dangled limply from a stringy cluster of tendons and spinal cord. Somehow, horrifically, the creature was still alive, albeit completely paralyzed and wheezing for breath that wouldn't come.

Grasping the Sonee's head with his other hand, Kevin ripped the entire thing clean off and tossed it back into the structure for the surviving ferals to scream at. It was pretty much the same as uncorking a wine bottle, only much more satisfying. For a few moments, he thought of tipping the decapitated corpse up like a fuzzy beer stein and drinking its contents, but common sense prevailed in the end. Anyway, the foul little demons probably all had a good two dozen diseases apiece, and he wasn't particularly looking forward to gulping down a mouthful of tainted chu-juice. With a satisfied smirk, he threw the headless body away and reached through the bars for a second victim.

A choking, strangled shriek rang out from the sandbox. Kuri had discovered a pair of Roseys trying to hide beneath the surface, using tiny drinking straws they'd found in the trash to breathe. She'd unearthed one, but not before forcing a few lumps of sand down the tube into its mouth. The feral was now stumbling around like Al after a particularly intense poker night, clutching at her throat as she wheezed and coughed up the grit in her lungs. Ignoring the panicked throes of her first victim, Kuri tapped the sandbox gently with her fingers, edging nearer and nearer to the buried Rosey. She bent down to the straw and watched it quiver as the little creature below desperately sucked in air.

Without a word, Kuri took a deep breath, closed her lips around the end of the straw, and blew.

_Whump!_ A bulge appeared under the surface as the Rosey swelled up and burst like an overfilled balloon, her lungs and belly expanding so fast that her entire chest cavity ruptured before she even realized what had happened. The sand quickly turned red as a thick bloodstain spread outward from the point of the explosion. Kuri didn't even bother digging out the remains.

"Arrrrhgh…ghhrrrrgrgrgh….woseyurgh...hrrrrrgh…guhhhhhh…" wheezed the other Rosey. The sand it had managed to hack up was now turning red. Staggering forward, it tripped and fell over the side of the sandbox with a squishy thud.

Kuri decided that it would be more entertaining to let the little retard heave its own lungs out. She had other babies to kill. In fact…

A panicked squeak sounded behind one of the picnic tables. She looked up to see a Sonee trying its very best to conceal its misshapen body behind a wooden table leg. Unfortunately for it, that "very best" concealment left both of its armstubs and ears poking out for the world to see.

The Jerkop rolled her eyes. This was almost too easy.

The frightened feral never even had a chance. Kuri snatched it up by its long, pointed ears, shaking her captive in midair as it shrieked and bawled in immense pain. Raising her tekko-kagi, she punched the Sonee right in the torso. The three sharp steel claws impaled it instantly, but Kuri wasn't done yet. She carefully pushed the feral's body all the way down to the weapon's hilt, firmly securing it in place so she could keep on killing the others while it was still alive.

On the opposite side of the playground, Steve was exercising his sadistic side through his new unofficial job as a Sonee-surgeon. He'd grabbed another of the little yellow-and-brown chus from the dwindling population within the play structure and had placed it down on the picnic table where Chris-Chan had met his end. The creature struggled helplessly, beating against his hands with its tiny armstubs. When that failed, it squeezed its eyes shut and fired off a tiny spark from its cheeks, perhaps hoping that this would somehow make the big nasty stranger let go.

"Oh, stop that," scolded the Jerkop, and upended the Sonee on its head. He looked puzzled, shook it gently, then tapped the creature at various points on its stomach, behind the tail, right above its feet, and around its pelvis. The hoglet continued crying as blood rushed to its head, but was only able to kick its captor now. And seeing as how it didn't have any legs, this escape attempt worked about as well as the spark had.

Kevin glanced up from the Rosey he was currently disemboweling to see what his squad leader was doing. Steve was obviously looking for something on the Sonee, but he had no idea what on earth it could possibly…

"BINGO!" yelled Steve in delight as he finally located the correct nerve point half an inch below the navel. A tiny red pickle instantly slid out through a hidden flap of skin between the little chu's legs. Suspending the crying feral with one hand, the Jerkop raised his knife and began batting the dangling organ back and forth with the tip of the blade.

The Sonee didn't like this at all, and assaulted his ears with a fresh wave of sobs.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!"

"Shut up." Steve placed the kukri on the table, inserted two fingers into his victim's mouth, and forced it open. The Sonee tried to bite down, but without teeth or adequate jaw muscles, there was no way it could defend itself. In less than two seconds, the Jerkop had it by the tongue. "Didn't your mommy ever teach you it's not polite to talk back to your elders?" He pinched his fingers shut, tearing out the wet piece of flesh. "Of course she didn't. That's a lot better, don't you think?"

"AAGHHHGURURGGEEURGH!" shrieked the Sonee through the gout of blood filling its mouth. It grasped helplessly for the severed tongue in Steve's fingers, perhaps believing it could somehow reattach the entire thing if it could just grab hold of it…

The Jerkop rolled his eyes and flicked the tongue away with his thumb and index finger, putting at least three yards between it and the now-speechless Sonee. Flipping the chu upside down again to make sure it didn't choke to death on its own blood, he gripped it by its feet and eyed the revolting half-inch of red skin dangling from its crotch.

"You mutants make me sick," he spat in revulsion. "You're all just fuzzy parasitic lumps of cancer that your parents threw out here because they wanted to keep fucking each other all day." He pressed the edge of his kukri against the creature's belly and began inching it upward, shaving off the soft peach-colored fur like a barber with a razor. "Well, at least that won't happen to any of _your_ kids when you evolve. Not after this."

_Shick!_

"HURGHEEEEEEEEAUGH!"

The sharp steel blade sheared right through the Sonee's penis, lopping it off at the base. The little red pickle spun as it fell, smacked against the table, then rolled between the wooden boards and dropped to the ground. Steve glanced down, lifted a boot, and nonchalantly crushed the organ into nothing more than a smear on the concrete. Turning back to his victim, he gave the shrieking feral a gentle squeeze and chuckled as a thin stream of blood squirted out of the ragged wound. It looked as if it were pissing cranberry juice.

Kevin couldn't tear his eyes away.

Steve raised his knife to finish the job, then shrugged and tossed the neutered Sonee over his shoulder. It hit the ground hard…unfortunately for it, not hard enough to kill it or even break its legs. All it could do was lie there helplessly, moaning and twitching in a haze of indescribable pain and misery.

"You'll be fine," chuckled the Jerkop heartlessly. "Enjoy the rest of your life, you fuckin' abomination." He sat down and wiped his knife off on the wooden bench, then glanced up at Kevin, who was still staring at him in awe. "Hey, there's still a few left. Don't be shy; go finish that one and get another before…"

"_Honey Badger Lead, Tomgirl Lead, come back, over," _Jackie's familiar voice crackled through the walkie-talkie on his shoulder.

Steve sighed and sheathed the kukri. "Go ahead, Tomgirl Lead, over."

"_Steve, we're compromised. Blanca's squad accidentally woke up the hive. EHPF are swarming all over the place – they'll be heading to the abandoned zone as soon as they realize we're after their babies. Get your team out of there as fast as you can, over."_

"Copy. See you back at Slumberland. Out." The sadistic gleam quickly faded out of Steve's eyes as he clipped the radio back on to his shoulder strap. "All right, playtime's over! Allie! Kevin!" - he called to the two Jerkops – "Round up any stragglers and bring them to the trash can. Kuri, finish up and give them a hand. Sugar, safety on!"

The honey badger looked up from the carcass of her fifth larva and growled. Her muzzle was stained red, and she seemed irritated that Steve had interrupted her meal. Nevertheless, she shook herself off and scurried back to her place at the Jerkop's side. Steve knelt and patted her on the head. "Good girl."

Atop the teeter-totter, Allie let out a quiet sigh of disappointment and looked down at the Sonee she'd been torturing. Its arms now hung in tatters from its shoulders. She'd force-fed each stub into the joint where the equipment's frame connected to the crossbar, slowly squishing away the meaty little tubes with every rise and fall of the teeter-totter. Picking up the moaning chu in one hand, she quickly smashed its head against the steel frame in the same manner as one would crack open an egg. It was an act of mercy, compared to what she'd been putting it through.

Kevin was working on his third victim with a large wood chip when Steve's order reached his ears. Disappointed that the fun had to end so soon, he picked up the Rosey's twitching, splinter-ridden body and hurried over to join the rest of his squad.

Steve bent down and heaved the garbage can back upright with one push, showing no interest in the terrified crying and squeaks of surprise emanating from within. Kevin knew there had to be at least three more larvae hiding beneath the trash. Kuri arrived with a tiny Rosey and promptly tossed her into the wastebasket. The chu squealed in fear and surprise as she bounced off the side of the can and slid down to join her fellow ferals in the stinking pit.

"You too, Kevin," urged Kuri. "Come on, hurry up."

Kevin stepped forward and dropped his Rosey in without a word.

"Right. Any others still alive out there?" asked Steve. "That last one I did doesn't count – he's as good as dead right now."

Something rustled next to Kevin's foot. Glancing down at the layer of trash strewn about down there, he noticed a flash of yellow fur and a terrified green eye staring back up at him. A lone survivor.

For a moment, he considered just leaving the Sonee there and forgetting to tell the others that he'd seen it. What would the little creature do, now that all its brothers and sisters were dead or (in one case) sterilized? It had no home, no family, not even anyone to play with it. All alone in the world, surrounded by death and pain…it was almost pitiful.

Almost.

Images of Jake's mutilated body and the nauseating corpse pile in the sewers flashed through Kevin's head as he reached down and plucked the Sonee right out of its hiding place. No. They weren't cute. They were only Chandler's bastard grandchildren, born to dispose of anyone who dared to oppose the mayor. Kevin remembered how he'd just stood there in horror, unable to move as the little abominations swarmed his injured friend like hungry maggots, chomping and biting and ripping and tearing and…

"Hey!" Steve smiled as he noticed the struggling fugitive in Kevin's grasp. "Nice find." He nodded to the trash can. "Toss it in with the rest. We're leaving."

"What about them?" asked Allie, kicking the wastebasket as Kevin stepped forward and dropped the Sonee into the pit on top of the others. It landed with a muffled yelp. "What do we do with them?"

"That's where you and Trogdor come in," replied Steve. "Kuri? Soak 'em."

Kuri shrugged off her backpack, unzipped it, reached inside, and withdrew an unmarked aluminum bottle. She twisted off the cap and upended it over the mouth of the garbage can, coating the interior with a clear liquid. The unmistakable smell of gasoline quickly saturated the night air.

"We're going to send their parents a message," the Jerkop explained as Allie retrieved her flamethrower from the grass. "That no matter how many loyalists Chandler throws at us…no matter how many larvae his chus shit out for us to exterminate…no matter how many of our brothers and sisters fall in battle…the Honey Badgers don't care."

"Honey Badgers don't give a shit," added Kuri.

"Damn right," said Allie, and lifted Trogdor the Burninator's mouth over the fuel-soaked wastebasket. "For Jake."

"For Jake," replied Kevin, Steve, and Kuri solemnly.

_FWOOOSH!_ Allie gave the trigger a quick squeeze and stepped back as a sheet of fire exploded out of the garbage can and climbed a full three feet upward before it dissipated into smoke. Muffled cries and thumps began emanating from the makeshift oven as the little chus pawed helplessly at the walls of their prison in a futile, desperate attempt to escape the roaring inferno. The sides of the cylinder began to glow; the combustible trash had burst into flames and was now roasting the Sonees and Roseys alive.

Finally, the noises from the can grew silent. In the distance, a siren blared.

"Let's go," Steve muttered. "Let their parents handle the cleanup." He reached for the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and twisted the dial to the right frequency. "Truck Six, Honey Badger Lead, come back. We're holding at McIntire Park with Sparkers incoming, over."

"_Truck Six here. You ready for extraction, Steve? Over."_

"Copy," replied the Jerkop. "We got what we came for. Get us back home, ASAP. Over."

"_Good job. ETA four minutes. Out."_

**One hour later, Slumberland**

"So how'd the debriefing go?" Matt asked from his seat beside the fireplace as Allie and Kevin trudged wearily through the door. Most of the other Honey Badgers were fast asleep, Kuri was in the shower room washing off her paint, and Steve had stayed behind to speak with Al about the next day's assignments. At the moment, the three of them were the only ones still awake in the barracks.

Kevin slumped onto the sofa, and was quickly joined by Allie. "About as well as you'd think. We fucked up, no questions there."

"How many times am I gonna have to say this? It wasn't your fault," snapped Allie. "You'd never even _seen_ a feral before – how were you supposed to know they were waiting for you?"

"I just…I can't believe it." Matt stared at the floor and took a deep breath. "He was my best friend. We…we met each other in middle school. Then all this bullshit happened with Chandler and… and now…ah, _fuck _it all. Damn it. _Damn it._"

The Jerkop sniffed and covered his eyes with his hands. Kevin could hear him sobbing quietly over the crackling fireplace, and his own eyes grew moist as he remembered those days of patrolling the Shopping Center as a mall cop. He'd had a future then…a brand new life in CWCville with boundless possibilities and a circle of friends. Now that future had been shattered, that life was no more, and with Jake dead, the only old friends he had left were Matt and Allie.

A single tear rolled down Kevin's cheek. Then another, and another, and another, until he could no longer suppress the sadness that had been building inside him for the last few hours. Hurriedly wiping his eyes on his sleeve, he stood up and headed for the sleeping room before either one of the Jerkops could say anything.

Kevin slowly pulled off his jacket and boots as if in a trance and placed them in a pile next to the worn floor mattress he slept on. Jexis, Amanda, and Nick were already asleep around him, still unaware that one of their squadmates now lay dead and devoured in the tunnels beneath CWCville. How would they react when Al broke the bitter news the next morning? Sadness? Rage? Indifference?

Angry thoughts filled Kevin's head as he lay down and closed his eyes. Why him? Why had fate chosen to inflict so much collateral damage upon him and his friends, yet kept Chandler and his Electric Hedgehog Pokémon alive, wealthy, and privileged? What a cruel world. What a stupid, cruel world.

He couldn't lose them. Not now, not ever. No matter what, he wouldn't let Chandler take them away like he'd taken Billy, Laurie, and now Jake. He could never forget the people lying there in that corpse pile beneath the city…those glassy dead eyes that seemed to stare directly into his no matter which way he turned…the pale cold skin and horrific eternal expressions of pain and misery…

But now the faces had changed in his mind. Instead of the unknown citizens from before, most of the dead people had transformed into someone he knew. Laurie and another woman lay hand in hand on top, locked together in eternity just for the crime of loving one another. Jake and Matt and Billy were there too, all cold and lifeless and crumpled on the ground. Kel was slumped on her side with her head pressed down against the pile, next to a horribly burned young woman he somehow knew to be Allie.

And beneath them all, right where he'd found the young dead girl, lay his little sister Lucy.

A hand shakily touched his arm. Kevin opened his eyes to see Allie staring down at him pleadingly. Her eyes were shiny with tears.

_Can I?_ she mouthed. _Please?_

Kevin nodded sleepily and rolled over. He felt a slight fuzzy sensation in his chest as Allie gratefully climbed in beside him, but was far too tired to ask what was wrong or if he could do anything to help. It might have been for the best, though. By the time she lay down and pulled up the blankets, he had already crashed halfway into slumber.

The two Jerkops quietly drifted off to sleep side by side, and were soon lost in pleasant kaleidoscopic dreams of dying chu larvae, Beatles music, and peppermints.


	9. Chapter 6: Suffer the Little Children

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 6: Suffer the Little Children**

**April 4, 2004, CWCville slums, PVCC "Slumberland" headquarters**

"Walsh here."

"_Howell, Schroeder, and Gee here."_

"_Hi, BILLY MAYS here!"_

"_Cash and Thaddeus here."_

"_Hill here."_

"_Liquid and Devoria here."_

"_Leary here."_

"_Surfshack Tito here, little cuz."_

"_Agents O'Neil and McKenzie here."_

"Right." Mary Lee Walsh leaned toward the webcam on her desk and adjusted her horned hairband. Around her sat a dozen screens of various sizes, each displaying the face of a different PVCC administrator. The Miscreants had assembled. "I know it's been a while, but as you all know, I've been preoccupied due to my injuries. Vivian, thank you once again for filling me in on the events and impact of Operation Rift."

"_My pleasure,"_ replied Vivian Gee.

"Jason, you may start," continued Walsh. "How goes the support effort in Tennessee?"

"_Slowly but surely, or so my associates tell me,"_ Jason Kendrick Howell replied. _"Our propaganda campaigns are undergoing preliminary tests, particularly the Rosechu sex-change accusations and Thaddeus's advertisement override."_

"_For those of you who don't know what he means,"_ Jack Thaddeus added, _"Clyde and I found a tiny flaw in the CWCville media security network. We're working to slowly introduce subtle pro-gay and lesbian advertisements into the city's television network, mainly through Family Guy."_

"_Excellent choice, Jack,"_ commented Alec Benson Leary. _"As for me, I can't really give an estimate on when the gene sequencing for Project Asperchu will be complete. All the material Walsh sends us keeps degrading before we can extract the full chu genome. We'll piece it together eventually, but it's going to take time."_

"Alec, you know I can't control how fast the material degrades," Walsh answered with a frown. "Here's an idea – I'll have one of my Jerkop squads capture a live Sonee and a live Rosey. We'll bring them to your labs, have your technicians force-evolve them, and _then_ extract the genome from the live adult chus. I'll get Blanca's squad or the Honey Badgers on this after we're done."

"_Good idea!"_ boomed BILLY MAYS.

Walsh winced. The TV spokesman/politician's voice was still unbelievably loud, even through a TV. One or two decibels more and he'd be reaching BRIAN BLESSED levels. She reached out and cranked BILLY's volume down a few bars.

"_That actually brings us to our next problem."_ Vivian Gee leaned back in her chair and removed her glasses to clean them. _"The ferals. Rift's working, that's for sure, but I can't help thinking that we entered the cycle too late. According to Alec's research and my own analyses, the ferals are still holding the abandoned zone. Seems even Chandler doesn't want them to leave – remember, that's why we can't safely disrupt the body dumps."_

"_Exactly,"_ Leary added. _"Cut off their food supply and they'll go for other sources. I think we all know what those are."_

A few seconds of silence passed. Mary Lee Walsh knew what he meant. Since the beginning of Operation Rift, feral attacks had claimed a total of six Jerkops, two of which hailed from her very own Slumberland squads. Previous Sonee and Rosey-related casualties had been rarities. This new wave of deaths meant nothing less than a full-scale retaliation from the feral population of CWCville against their destroyers. The PVCC track record was very good, however. On the whole, each Jerkop now had an average of forty feral kills to his or her name. A friendly feud between squads was currently running; the object was to see who could rack up the most dead chus in a single patrol. For once, the Tomgirls were besting the Picklemen at something.

"All we can do now," the PVCC supreme commander muttered grimly, "is to continue Rift to our fullest extent. It's going to be somewhat harder now that Chandler knows what we're up to, but I have faith in my Jerkops." She smiled. "We'll just have to wait and see what happens over the next few months. Now as for O'Neil and McKenzie, I believe we might have found another double agent to help you out. At least, once Graduon's secret protégé is ready, that is…"

**Slumberland garage, squad assembly area, 10:30 p.m.**

"Walsh wants us to _what_?"

Steve nodded to Amanda and adjusted the band of his dust mask. "Project Asperchu. Al wouldn't give me the more intimate details, but apparently it's some kind of bioweapons development program headed by Alec Benson Leary. The admins have been researching chu DNA for some time now, but now they're saying it's time to move forward. And now we get to be the lucky ones to take that first step."

"Well, exactly how hard _is_ it to catch two of the little shits?" asked Zoey as she continued scouring out the barrel of her AK-47 with a wire brush. "They run about as fast as narcoleptic turtles. Couldn't we just pick 'em up and stuff 'em in a bag or something?"

"Yes…we _could_," replied Steve. "Unfortunately for us, it's not gonna be quite that easy. We know the EHPF's been diverting a huge amount of patrols to the abandoned zone day and night, so that's one thing. For another thing, Al told me that Walsh's spies in Chandler's circle of gal-pals have been overhearing plans for even more security measures, plus some other big plan to protect the ferals. Whatever. All I know is that just getting close enough to a Sonee and a Rosey, let alone capturing them, is gonna be one hell of a tall order."

"So you're sayin' the ferals have bodyguards now?" Amanda scoffed. "Goddamn Chandler. I swear, that man-child's got his…"

"No, no, I'm not saying _that_," the squad leader assured her. "The EHPF can't exactly _babysit_ them – they've still got to deal with us. All I'm saying is that it's been getting harder and harder to infiltrate their territory since Chandler decided to counter Rift. Odds are, we're going to need to blow something up to distract 'em long enough to get past the patrols into the abandoned zone. That's where you come in Amanda…unless you don't think you can get their attention."

"Please." Amanda rolled her eyes and pointed a thumb at the grenade launcher strapped across her back. "Steve, just 'cause you ain't been out huntin' with me for four days don't mean I'm gettin' rusty."

"She's right," added Zoey. "Speaking of which, how's your ear doing, Matt?"

Matt tilted his head and wiggled a finger around inside his left ear. "Not too bad. Still need the drops for the swelling, though."

"Okay then," said Steve somewhat disinterestedly. "Anyways, I've assigned two teams for this operation, Sonee squad and Rosey squad. I'll take Sonee with Allie, Kuri, Serge, and Amanda, Zoey gets Rosey with Kevin, Matt, Nick, and Jexis. We'll light the fuse, you just get through and hold at Point One, got it?"

Kevin automatically sidestepped over to Matt, glad he would at least have one of his old friends to talk to. Allie flashed him a grin as she filed in behind Steve, then promptly started up a conversation with Kuri.

"What happened to your ear?" he muttered under his breath as Steve and Zoey continued outlining their plans to each other.

Matt shot a glare at Amanda. "Baby Boomer. Went off early last night and took down an entire EHPF truck while I was running for cover. I couldn't hear out of that side of my head for the rest of the mission. Jexis gave me some anti-inflammatory drops, but I'm still hearing this weird thumping noise somewhere back in there."

"You gonna be all right?"

The Jerkop nodded. "Yeah, as long as I'm far away from her for a few days, I'll be just fine."

"What _is_ a Baby Boomer, anyway?" asked Kevin. "Everyone keeps talking about them."

Matt chuckled and grinned. "I think tonight might be your lucky night. They're mobile explosives…Amanda found a way of using captured Sonees and Roseys as IEDs. You gotta see it for yourself…it's just _awesome_."

"Yeah, we used to deal with the _perros fuegos_ - those were dog bombs - back in Juarez," commented Nick. "Same principle, just another animal. But this time _we're_ the terrorists."

Kevin and Matt couldn't argue with that. What the PVCC was doing definitely qualified as terrorism in its most basic form, but once one compared their drastic actions with the consequences of living under Chandler's control, the word suddenly didn't sound so despicable anymore.

"Okay, final briefing before we leave," announced Zoey as she and Steve parted and joined their respective squads. "We do _not_ engage the chus unless Sonee squad's pinned down. We get into the abandoned zone, regroup, split up, lure and grab a Rosey, and _then_ we'll start exterminating them if we still have time. Any questions?"

"Do you think we'll be fighting anything worse than mercs out there?" asked Jexis with a slight note of uncertainty in her voice.

Zoey looked just as lost for answers as the medic. "Expect the worst, hope for the best. Steve always told me that when we were training under Al. If something _does_ happen, just remember the fallback procedures and we should be all right. Now load up and get to the trucks."

**Twenty minutes later, CWCville abandoned zone**

"_Slumberland, Cashier Lead. Operation is still active, but we missed our extraction. Half my team's still pinned down in the apartment block by mercs and chus. We're low on ammo and have sustained multiple injuries. Request additional troops to disrupt the attack, over."_

"_Copy Cashier Lead, stand by for confirmation. Okay, we're sending in a few of the Red Devils to bail you out. Maintain your position and try to keep everyone alive, understood? Over."_

"_Copy. Over and out."_

Kevin closed his eyes and listened to the radio chatter crackling through the truck's ancient built-in speakers. While he had no idea what the other squads were doing, he was slowly piecing together the night's series of events from the incoming reports. So far, no one really important had died, and the feral body count was steadily rising with each passing minute. The Tomgirls stood well in the lead with twenty-four confirmed kills, but the White Medallions and the Picklemen were close behind with twenty each. The ALBinos had miraculously taken out a transport van full of loyalist mercenaries, and the Spikes of Blue and a ChinaTown-based squad were engaged in a pitched shootout with EHPF officers in a derelict gay bar.

As for the Honey Badgers, no one seemed to have acknowledged their mission or even knew they were out trying to catch live ferals. Kevin guessed it was all due to the secretive nature of Project Asperchu. Zoey had said that everything about it was passed down to Al and Steve on a need-to-know basis, so they were all on the same level in terms of information.

With so much Jerkop activity tonight, the entire Slumberland communications network was running at full strength, monitoring every squad's progress, dishing out advice and new revised strategies, recording chu sightings, and relaying messages back and forth from the field teams to base. As the PVCC's lead communications director, Bryan Bash must have been _incredibly_ stressed about overseeing all of this. Kevin smiled and imagined the admin running back and forth between monitors, shouting alternately into his headset and at Vivian Gee as he struggled to keep his tech team from devolving into chaos.

"What're _you_ so happy about?" asked Matt from the seat next to him.

Kevin glanced out the window. "Nothing. Just thinking."

"Me too." The Jerkop looked sullenly at his feet. "It's just so weird. Sometimes I think Jake's still here, or I keep dreaming about the Shopping Center…I don't know how you and Allie can just forget about it so quickly."

"It's been two weeks, Matt," replied Kevin quickly. The familiar empty space was beginning to creep back into his gut. "I still miss him too, but you can't let it affect you this much."

"I know, it's just…" Matt's voice was tinged with frustration and anger. "Goddamn it. I just keep feeling so helpless and I can't make myself think otherwise. I don't even know what to do. I just want Chandler dead and all his chus dead with him."

"We all do," Jexis spoke up reassuringly. "Don't worry, we'll get our chance. Think of it this way – every larva we kill is another step towards avenging Jake…and Ricky and Caroline and Scott and everyone who…"

"Wait, who were those other three?" asked Kevin. "I know someone mentioned Ricky before…aren't I his replacement?"

Zoey nodded from the front of the truck. "Yeah, Ricky was killed about a week before you showed up. Ferals got him, too. Caroline and Scott were some of Al's original squad – the EHPF ambushed and zapped them both back when I was just getting started alongside Al and Steve. There were others…hobos, mostly. I don't remember too much. Those were bad days. No ferals back then, just mercs and chus and the Chaotic Combo. It was pretty much a fight for our lives."

"Wow." Kevin had never heard this before. "So you and Al and Steve were the only survivors from back then?"

"No, back then we were called the HEXterminators, founded by two guys…John and Marcus. They were both soldiers like Al, but…aw hell, I don't even remember what happened to them. Whatever the case, they're both dead now. Al's the last link we have to the very beginning of the resistance. Anyways, now we…"

Her shoulder radio hissed once, then Steve's voice sounded from the speaker. _"Zoey, it's Steve. We're seeing a lot of flashing lights in there. Looks like you're gonna have to run like hell once Amanda starts the fireworks. Over."_

Zoey twisted back around and squinted through the windshield. "Goddamn it. Copy that, I see 'em. See if she can take out a few of the cruisers, over."

"_I think she's got that covered. Out."_

"We've got a shitload of EHPF waiting down there," the Jerkop growled as Kevin watched the red and blue flashes growing larger and larger in the darkness. "We're going to have to improvise a bit. Will, drop us at that gas station over there and get to a safe distance. We'll let you know when we need a lift back."

"You take care now, Zoey," the driver replied as he pulled the truck up to the sidewalk in front of the ruined gas station. A faded sign beside the street read **CWC-Gas – Easy, Cheap, TRUE, and HONEST**. Kevin smirked. He'd be surprised if any of those adjectives were actually TRUE. With the War on Terror erupting in the Middle East, oil prices had soared across Virginia and the rest of the American regions. Add to that the whole C-Quarter and W-Quarter debacle, and gas now cost somewhere around $6.00 a gallon. The PVCC siphoned their own meager supply from derelict stations and government fuel trucks, but the human civilians of CWCville once again had to bear the full burden of Chandler's monetary failures.

The Honey Badgers quickly evacuated the truck, leaving Will alone to find a safe hiding spot for it. As the vehicle pulled away, Zoey shouldered her AK and tapped the side of her walkie-talkie.

"Rosey team to Sonee team, we just disembarked and are proceeding on foot to Point Zero. You'd better have that distraction ready, Steve. Over."

"_You doubting me, Zo? Just get over here. Out."_

Zoey looked up at her team. "You heard him. Move up to that intersection and stay out of sight. Matt, you're on point. Let's go."

**Seven blocks away, CWCville abandoned zone**

"How's it look down there?" asked Julia, glancing across the roof at her squadmate as Miles continued scanning the ruins of Scrapland.

"Barren. Still nothing," muttered the Sweetbolt sniper. He winced as another piercing wail rang out across the quiet city skies. "Goddamn it, will you just fucking kill that thing already? They're not coming."

"Fine." Julia sighed and began reeling in the length of fishing line she'd been playing with. Twenty feet down, a live Sonee was tied to the end, dangling in midair by a single blue sneaker. The two Jerkops had been swinging it around to see if they could make it scream and thus attract some of the little chu's feral brethren, but so far, the latter goal had eluded them. Now they were just stuck up here on their own with an unbelievably terrified Sonee, waiting for the other members of their squad to give them the all-clear.

"Bet they're finding _all_ the nests down there," she lamented. "Goddamn Yuri. Next time, _he's_ babysitting you, understand? You're just…boring."

"Am not," Miles responded under his breath. He was too busy watching for chus to care whether Julia was entertained or not. She'd just complain and complain until the rest of the Sweetbolts showed up, just like she always did. Julia knew it annoyed him to no end, especially since he was always demanding that everyone else be quiet in the Hogwash barracks.

"Come on, you gonna watch me off him?" The woman heaved the shuddering feral up over the edge of the roof and began rolling it back and forth in the gravel. Its throat was raw from screaming so much, and it could only manage a few wheezy sobs of anxiety.

Miles shook his head. "Nah."

Julia scowled. "Bah. You're no fun anyway. Fine, your loss." She picked up the Sonee and took a few steps back, calculating her throw. "Hey, I think I can put it through that window down there!"

_WHUMP! CRUNCH!_

The Jerkop felt a sudden breeze whip her hair forward. Clutching the feral tightly in her hand, she spun around to see what had happened.

Miles' head smacked her in the breast with a sticky wet _thud_, leaving a dark smear of blood across her shirt and jacket. Before the Jerkop could scream, a gloved hand had her by the throat. The white thing lifted her bodily off the ground in a single heave. Trapped and suffocating, Julia flailed helplessly in the air as her captive Sonee screeched and bawled and writhed to escape her crushing grip.

_Shick!_

Julia felt a fiery whip lash across her belly as something curved and metallic slit her open like a fish being gutted. She only felt a brief, sickening sensation as her intestines slithered out and hung - loose and dripping - from the point of incision.

There was only pain in her world now…pain and darkness and bitter cold. Julia died with a single hysterical giggle, her eyes rolling back in their sockets of their own accord. Her fingers went limp, and the wriggling Sonee instantly dropped from her hand. It smacked the edge of the roof once and bounced out into empty space, shrieking in hopeless terror.

"SONEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeee…"

"Heretic," hissed the angel, and released her grip on the Jerkop's neck. She licked her sickle as the lifeless body fell into oblivion, running her tongue up the blessed silver blade to taste the bitter blood smeared across its surface. "Magi-Chan, I've found them. Warn the mayor and dispatch more ground units to the abandoned zone."

"_Already on their way,"_ replied the floating purple head in her peripheral vision.

Down in the street below, the falling Sonee smashed against the pavement and burst apart like a melon, splattering the sidewalk and half of a nearby trash can with a mess of blood and viscera. Only two blue sneakers remained, surrounded by a chunky red stain on the concrete and a few scraps of yellow, brown, and peach fuzz.

Seconds later, Julia's body joined it.

**CWCville abandoned zone, near the EHPF blockade**

Kevin never would have guessed just how much Chandler had increased his security around the abandoned zone over the past two weeks. Just three nights earlier, he'd been out with Steve, Amanda, Matt, and Sugar on an extermination run through these very same roads, and they'd only had to avoid three EHPF patrols in total. Now the loyalists had set up an intimidating welcome wagon for any Jerkops who happened to stray near the intersection – a full street blockade with police cruisers, barricades, barbed wire, and what looked like three or four mercenary soldiers.

Kevin had to admit it – whoever was pulling the strings of Chandler's private army definitely knew what they were doing. He hoped Steve and Zoey knew what _they_ were doing, too.

Beside him, Nick was kneeling by the shattered window of their drugstore shelter, observing the chus through a monocular. For the last five minutes, the mercenary and Zoey had been relaying enemy troop positions to Steve's squad, in order to maximize the effective range of Amanda's "distraction." With so many searchlights sweeping the area, this was proving to be a rather perilous task.

To top it off, they hadn't so much as glimpsed a single feral on their way over to Point Zero.

"This is bullshit," Matt growled, ducking his head away as another blinding beam flashed through the window. "Hell, why don't we just go down into the sewers and catch a few? There's five of us in each squad…they won't be able to jump us if we stay together."

"That's exactly what we're doing," replied Zoey. "They blew up the main canal entrance, so that's why we've got to go this way to get into the sewers now. Jexis, you still want to be in charge of the bait?"

The medic nodded and hummed a few bars of "" to herself.

"Good. I think Steve's had more than enough time to get Amanda prepped." Zoey tapped her radio. "Rosey lead to Sonee lead, come back, over."

"_Go ahead, Zo. You guys ready to run? Over."_

"Affirmative. Light 'em up."

"_My pleasure. Amanda?"_

_BOOM!_

Kevin stumbled back a few inches, startled by the earsplitting bang and the massive plume of orange and yellow fire that erupted from the foremost EHPF cruiser. The few remaining pieces of glass in the window frame shattered instantly, raining down on Nick as he cursed and leapt away from the falling shards. Through the oily black smoke, Kevin could see a pair of Sonichus on fire, writhing on the ground as their fur and headspikes ignited.

Before the loyalists could recover from the initial shock, Serge's RPD opened up with a clattering roar like a rusty chainsaw, perforating the other vehicles and another EHPF officer with heavy machine gun rounds. The stricken chu spun and fell with a cry of pain, leaving a thick splash of blood across the front of the adjacent cruiser. The enemy mercs, on the other hand, had already taken cover behind the concrete barricades and were now proceeding to lay down a withering barrage of SMG rounds at their attackers. Kevin saw one soldier lean out and toss something across the intersection into the building Serge was firing from.

"That's it! RUN!" yelled Zoey, and vaulted through the window. Jexis and Nick followed simultaneously, then Kevin, then Matt.

_BANG!_ The front of the pet shop went up in flames as the fragmentation grenade exploded inside. Kevin couldn't tell whether anyone had been caught in the blast, but right now Steve and his squad were the least of his worries. It looked as if Zoey was leading them right into the most dangerous part of the intersection. The fires from the destroyed cruiser and the thunderous sounds of gunfire were concealing them for now, but if they caught the attention of the other loyalists…

Up ahead, Zoey slid to a halt near a manhole in the middle of the road and wrenched off the heavy cover with Nick's help. Tossing the metal circle away, she dropped her AK inside and slid down into the darkness. Nick quickly ushered Jexis down after their squad leader and stood up, raising his rifle to his shoulder.

"Get in there!" he yelled to Kevin.

"What are you…"

"Making our job easier," snarled the sniper. "Now get down there, _chico_."

Wasting no time, Kevin hurried to the open manhole and lowered his feet and legs into the blackness. There was no ladder here - only a black synthetic climbing rope that one of the other squads had attached a week earlier. He grabbed it and slid down instinctively, taking a deep breath before the dank smell of raw sewage reached his nose.

_Thump!_

Kevin's feet slipped out from under him as he hit the slimy concrete floor and collapsed instantly. Pain shot through his side, but in seconds it had quickly faded to a dull ache. He pulled himself back to his feet and staggered away just as Matt dropped down from the rope. Above them, two hollow rifle shots rang out across the street.

"Where's Nick?" Zoey yelled. Kevin couldn't see her or Jexis – no one had turned on their flashlights yet.

"Still up top," gasped Matt. "I think he's trying to…"

_Clang!_

A dark shape covered the manhole opening above. Nick hurriedly rappelled into the sewer and slid the heavy cover back in place before descending the rest of the way down to his fellow squadmates. Kevin heard the Jerkop curse as he slipped and fell. This area of the sewer seemed to be much more moist than the other entryways had been during the Honey Badgers' previous excursions into the abandoned zone.

"We all here?" asked Zoey. She sounded out of breath. "Let's do a head count. Zoey here."

"Jexis here."

"Matt here."

"Kevin here."

"Nick here. Think I just smashed my hip open, but I'm still here."

"Okay, that's everyone. Lights on."

_Click. Click. Click. Click. Click._

"GOO-GOOOOOOOOOO!"

"NEEEEEEEEE!"

"SEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Kevin nearly fell over again as he jerked away in surprise. Illuminated by the flashlight beams, nearly three dozen feral Sonees and Roseys scattered like cockroaches, scampering away into the safety of the drainpipes. In less than five seconds, the small pack of baby chus had vanished into the bowels of CWCville's sewers.

A few more moments of stunned silence passed before Matt accurately summed up everyone's reaction.

"The fuck was _that_?"

"We must have dropped in on them," said Jexis. She picked up a filthy pink bow from the ground and examined it carefully. "They're getting jumpy now. Good thing there's five of us – I think they would've attacked Zoey if I hadn't been right behind her."

"So we…we just dropped out of the fire and landed in the frying pan, is that right?"

"Pretty much," Nick replied, and slid his rifle back into its strap as Zoey opened her mouth to chastise him. "Relax, _chica_ - they didn't even see me. I know I took one out for good, but his buddy's probably gonna live."

"Your funeral," grunted the Jerkop, and gestured to the rest of Rosey squad. "Okay, everyone listen. We're not splitting up this time. No shortcuts, no wandering off, and no leaving anyone behind. I'm not losing anyone on a damn feral kidnapping mission."

"Amen," muttered Matt.

"Right. We'll start drawing 'em out into the middle of the sewer. Matt, Nick, you two take Kevin and start setting up a blind in that tunnel. Jexis, go with them and find a place to set the bait. I'll scope out the best points of entry around there. I want everyone to keep an eye on everyone else, understand? Stay in sight."

Kevin nodded in approval. After seeing what happened to Jake, he had absolutely no objections to Zoey's plan or any of her precautions. The Jerkops set off on their separate tasks – the men to the blind construction, Zoey to observation, and Jexis to bait. Kevin and Matt followed Nick and watched as the former soldier perused the sides and ceiling of the tunnel.

"What are we looking for?" he asked.

"Just a spot with no overhead exposure," explained Nick. "They tend to travel using the pipes in the walls and ceiling. We don't have to worry about smell – Jexis has that covered. They're just really sensitive to sound and light. I used to hunt _javelina_ down in Baja; this stuff's child's play compared to them." He stepped forward a few feet and nodded. "Here. Okay, gather up rocks, bricks, scrap metal, trash, anything we can hide behind. Matt, give me that tarp."

Kevin hurried over to the nearest pile of debris and began excavating large chunks of concrete and twisted pieces of steel as fast as he could. In a few minutes, the three of them had managed to erect a makeshift semicircular wall large enough to hold five occupants. Once it was high and sturdy enough, Nick spread the camouflaged tarp over the top and tied down the ends to heavy rocks, securing it in place. Drawing his knife, he began cutting a few observation slits into the side.

A few yards away, Jexis had shrugged off her backpack and was now scattering handfuls of candy in brightly colored wrappers around the tunnel. For good measure, she piled the majority of it together in one spot and topped it off with a little Beanie Baby panda. The sweet fragrances of sugar and chocolate would mask the Jerkops' scent, and also worked well to attract their prey. Much like sharks, feral Sonees and Roseys had an incredible sense of smell, but even their heightened survival skills could be overridden with enough candy offerings.

"Whatever you do, don't eat these!" she called out to her squadmates. "We need them to smell these! Every one counts!"

Zoey returned from her survey just as Nick finished putting the final touches on their hunting blind.

"Looks good," she commented, nodding to the three builders. "Okay, I've blocked off a few of the smaller tunnel gaps, so if I'm right, we'll force them into a bottleneck at both ends of the tunnel. Odds are, there's gonna be a lot of 'em, but remember that we only need one. Jexis, you ready on that bait?"

Jexis dropped a last few mini-Snickers onto the pile. "All set here."

"Good. Everyone get behind the blind. They should smell that candy in a few…"

Zoey stopped abruptly. In the distance, Kevin could just barely make out a faint shuffling of feet and soft squeals. The horde was already on its way.

"Go!" Zoey sprinted toward the makeshift shelter and pushed Matt inside. Not wanting to get caught in the middle of a stampede, Kevin, Nick, and Jexis immediately hurried after them.

The inside of the blind was dark, cramped, uncomfortable, and smelled like sewage and body odor, but at least it concealed the five Jerkops well enough. Kevin worked his way over to the nearest view slit and peered outside, eager to see what would happen. It was difficult to tell what was going on without the benefit of his flashlight, but he could hear the little chus well enough. It sounded like there were close to fifty…maybe sixty of them, all converging on the immediate area. He took a slow, deep breath as the footsteps and cries drew closer and closer. With a crinkling and tearing of paper, the Sonees and Roseys began to snap up the first few wrapped candies on the ground.

"_Ten feet. Quiet,"_ whispered Jexis from beside him. Kevin nodded and held his breath. Happy cries of "YAY!" and "Goo-goo!" echoed through the tunnel as the swarm of feral chus streamed past their hiding spot, closing in on the candy pile with glee. They were ignoring the blind, fortunately for everyone inside. If the Jerkops were spotted, it wouldn't matter if there were five or fifteen of them – the ferals would simply bury them all in a shrieking tidal wave of teeth and fuzz.

Judging by the increased volume of their joyful cries, it sounded as if the ferals had reached the candy pile. Unbeknownst to them, the standard PVCC trapping process was anything but random in terms of bait selection. Tough, chewy candies like Tootsie Rolls and Laffy Taffy reigned supreme, followed by Jolly Ranchers, lollipops, saltwater taffy, caramels, mini-Snickers, and anything sticky or dense enough to impair the undeveloped-yet-sharp teeth of Sonees and Roseys. Soon the chus would hardly be able to open their mouths, and that would give the Honey Badgers the opportunity they had been waiting for.

The juicy sounds of smacking and chewing filled the cramped tunnel as the swarm dug in with gusto, stuffing their little mouths to the brim with the delicious sugary bait. It was like catnip to them – a substance they craved, but couldn't scavenge much of in the sewers and the abandoned zone. Most of them had never tasted anything but human meat and puddles of CWC Cola in their lives. To them, this was a miracle, sent straight to them through divine intervention from their ursine god and the goodwill of the grandfather they'd never met. Somehow, these two ideas had been ingrained in their minds since before they hatched – all effects of the genetic engineering that Chandler had…

"That's it! GET 'EM!" yelled Zoey, and tore the tarp away from the blind. Matt leapt up and flicked his light on, vaulting over the makeshift barricade with a small burlap sack clutched in his hand. Before the ferals could react, the Jerkop snatched up a Sonee and a Rosey and stuffed them both inside, then yanked the string on top to seal the bag.

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEY!" shrieked the nearest Rosey as she watched her friends vanish into the brown bag. "SEEE! SEEEEE!"

The horde turned away from their feast for a moment, then resumed devouring the sweets. One Sonee sat on top of the diminishing heap, hugging the stuffed panda tightly with one armstub and stuffing loads of Jolly Ranchers into his mouth with the other. Beneath him, a pair of Roseys were stretching out a Laffy Taffy between them. They'd almost pulled it a good five feet long when a Sonee waddled forward and bit the middle right out of it. The two ferals fell over backwards with squeaks of surprise, flailing on the ground as they tried to right themselves.

Matt slowly backed away and slung the writhing bag over his shoulder, ignoring the muffled cries from within. Unbelievably, most of the ferals didn't even seem to mind that he was there. The candy was simply too irresistible an offering to pass up.

"Did those two eat any of it?" yelled Jexis over the cacophony of squeals and chewing.

Matt shook his head. "I don't think so! Why?"

"Later!" Zoey pointed to the far end of the tunnel. "Let's get out of here before they finish it all!"

Kevin grabbed Nick's hand and helped him to his feet, then took off after Matt and Jexis. Zoey stayed behind a few seconds to untie the tarp and bolted down the tunnel as fast as she could. Sonees and Roseys were still trickling in from the ends, but apart from a few wayward glances or cries of alarm, none of them attempted to attack the fleeing Jerkops.

Once they were a safe distance away from the horde's line of sight, Jexis slowed and stopped. One by one, the Honey Badgers assembled. The room they were standing in appeared to be a degraded sewer junction, with rusty pipes running every which way. It was probably one of the main transportation hubs for the feral population beneath CWCville. Regardless of intelligence or physical competence, they certainly knew their way around the sewers better than the PVCC ever would.

Matt upended the burlap sack as Kevin and Zoey arrived, roughly dumping the pair of captured chus out onto the hard concrete.

"WOSEY!"

"NEE! SONEE!"

As soon as they were free, the babies attempted to scurry for safety, but in their haste, the Sonee tripped and the Rosey waddled right into a low-hanging pipe. _CLANG!_ She squealed in pain and fell over clutching her forehead, only for Jexis to pin her against the floor. Matt quickly grabbed the fallen Sonee and forced its mouth shut, preventing it from crying for help.

"Duct tape," the Jerkop grunted to Kevin, who immediately shrugged off his backpack and retrieved the requested item from inside. Working quickly, he tore off a long piece and passed it to Matt. In a matter of seconds, the Sonee was wrapped up like a Christmas present – gagged, bound, and unable to do anything but kick the air helplessly with its oversized sneakers. Matt set it down on its side so it couldn't stand back up, then moved over to help Jexis with her Rosey.

"Damn," breathed Zoey once both chus were safely taped up and secured. "That's what I call going above and beyond, Matt."

"Well, it just didn't seem right to just take one when they were both standing right there," replied Matt as he stuffed the writhing Sonee back into the bag. "Better safe than sorry, right? Anyway, we don't know whether Steve and the others had to pull back or not, so I thought we might as well have a backup chu." He pointed to the Rosey. "Nick, can you carry her?"

"I'll take it," offered Kevin before the sniper could speak.

"Good man." Matt passed him the chu and another bag. "Jexis, why'd you want to know if they ate the candy?"

The medic smiled and withdrew a flare from her backpack. "Because I added a few ingredients. See for yourself." She snapped the tube and heaved it down the tunnel, where it exploded into a shower of red sparks, illuminating the feeding frenzy.

Kevin squinted as he stuffed the taped-up Rosey into Matt's second bag and zipped it shut. There didn't seem to be much of a difference from what he'd witnessed a few minutes earlier. Beside him, Nick removed his rifle and detached the scope, then passed over his monocular for the younger Jerkop to use.

"Thanks." Kevin raised the lens to his eye and focused in on the flare. Around it, some of the little chus seemed to be having trouble breathing. Their eyes bulged from their sockets as they fought for air, clutching at their swollen throats with their armstubs. Others were wailing in pain, coughing up thick gobs of blood all over the candy pile and their comrades. One Sonee lay dead on the floor with a dark stain spreading out beneath it. A razor sharp X-Acto blade protruded from its jugular.

"Holy shit," he laughed. "What the hell did you put in those?"

"Oh, you know, rat poison, razors, ammonia, paint thinner, superglue, you name it." Jexis grinned and lowered her binoculars. "That's why you guys couldn't have any candy. Surprised?"

"Impressed," Zoey replied, placing her hands on her hips. "I think I got the better team after all."

"What? Don't tell me you doubted us," snorted Matt. He grinned and patted the bagged Sonee, who let out a muffled whine. "Okay, should we be getting back to the surface or what?"

Zoey nodded. "These radios won't work underground, and I don't think we ought to try going back up that same rope. We'll follow the sewer back toward where Steve said he was taking his squad. If we're lucky, we'll run into them down here. If not…we'll take the streets and wait for him to call us."

The Honey Badgers set off into the darkness once more, carrying their struggling cargo. Behind them, the few dozen Sonees and Roseys who had managed to figure out that the candy was poisoned quickly scattered and ran for their pipes, leaving their comrades behind to choke and shriek in pain as the toxins and blades laid waste to their innards. Here, a Sonee crumpled onto its side with a gurgling scream, a thick mass of foam bubbling from its mouth. There, two weakened Roseys tried to crawl away from the poisonous pile, but never managed to get more than two feet before each one finally succumbed to the deadly cocktail of sucrose and household cleaners stewing in their guts.

Over by the candy pile, a Sonee who had eaten vast quantities of Clorox-filled Fruit Gushers greedily shoved a piece of saltwater taffy into his mouth and chewed it, smacking his lips with satisfaction. Seconds later, he had collapsed to the ground, wheezing as huge puffs of green chlorine gas rushed out of his mouth, his nose, and every other orifice in his body, generated by the pure ammonia that Jexis had laced the taffy with. Another Sonee tried to escape the cloud, but was quickly overcome by the toxic vapors. Clutching at its throat, it shivered violently and fell dead in an instant. Further away, a Rosey frantically tried to force her jaws open to breathe, but the superglue she'd eaten had already set inside her and was hardening her esophagus with every passing second. As her bloodshot green eyes rolled back into her head, she gave a final desperate gasp, but only managed to force the straight razor in her belly all the way through her liver and into her intestines.

By the time the Jerkops had vanished into the depths of the sewer, the last faint agonized moans had stopped. Nothing remained of the once mighty swarm but a sea of nearly fifty corpses, a low-hanging cloud of deadly chlorine gas, and a single unharmed Beanie Baby panda.

**Seven blocks away, CWCville abandoned zone**

Angelica crouched upon an overlook, looking down at the denizens below.

She knew of their sins.

She knew GodJesus was angered by their presence, and she was not about to allow these heathens' existence to sink her holy city into Hell.

Armed with her blessed scythe, she was ready to cull the herd of the unholy, and deliver the city into the light that Christian had always wanted.

**Fifteen minutes later, somewhere beneath the abandoned zone**

"Seee! Seeeeeee!"

"Goo-goo! Neeeeee! Goo-gaa!"

"SHUT UP!" yelled Jexis, and delivered a fierce backhand to the Sonee inside Matt's bag. It screeched even louder, much to the annoyance of its captors.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!"

"_Madre de Dios! BASTA!" _Nick stuffed his fingers into his ears. "For God's sake, can we _please_ just cut their tongues out?"

"Too dicey," snarled Zoey through clenched teeth. "Jexis, don't hit them anymore. We can't risk them suffocating from the duct tape and we…"

"Nee! WAAAAAAAAAH!"

"SHUT UP! We can't risk having them choke on their own blood." The Jerkop looked around in exasperation. "Son of a bitch. Why on earth did Chandler design them so they forget to breathe if something's stuffed in their mouths?"

Jexis spat in disgust. "You really think he was considering functionality when he made these abominations? I've dissected about a dozen of them so far, and I can say for a fact that the moron had _no_ idea what he was doing. My guess is he just wanted to make the absolute cutesiest things in the world, but of course, he's got the creativity of a severely impaired box turtle."

"How do they even survive?" asked Kevin.

"Just because I'm the medic and I took biology in high school doesn't mean I can tell you how genetically-engineered life works!" Jexis replied loudly as the larvae began wailing once again. "Their body composition's really dense and compact, much more than it should be for something their size. They're mostly made of fat, but there's also a full nervous system, a few simple muscles, a huge digestive system – that's why they eat so damn much – and an enhanced respiratory system. It's all packed in there like an overstuffed suitcase. All that adipose tissue…"

"Goo-goo! GOO-GOO! GAA-GAA!"

"Fuck you too! Anyway, all the fat puts their circulatory system under a huge amount of pressure, which is why they get stressed so easily and need to keep breathing, or else they forget to and suffocate. Also explains how the little mutants can hold so much blood inside those fuzzy fatbags of theirs. Their lungs are also really big to compensate for the high blood pressure, and…"

"Why the hell are you telling us this?" yelled Matt.

"Because I'm going to go completely insane if I don't keep talking about something over this fucking sound!" Jexis nearly screamed in torment as the Rosey's crying somehow managed to reach a new pitch. "SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!"

Kevin plugged one of his own ears and gritted his teeth. At least Jexis, Zoey, and Nick all had both of their hands free to block out the noise. Forget Jim Carrey's famous screech in _Dumb and Dumber_, this was the most annoying sound in the world right here. It had been going on for a full fifteen minutes, ever since he and Matt had to rip off the duct tape gags to keep the little bastards alive and breathing. Now, he was beginning to wonder if it would have been a better idea to put the gags back on and just "forget" about the whole suffocation thing. Walsh would understand, and they'd be better prepared with earplugs and a soundproof cage if she sent them on another kidnapping mission.

As it stood, the Honey Badgers still had themselves a pair of live ferals. Until they found some way of silencing them, finished their mission, or outright killed the screaming chus, they were all stuck with this auditory torment for however long it took to get back home. And that third option was looking better and better with every passing second.

Kevin stepped over a low pipe after Jexis, taking care to jostle the Rosey on his back as much as possible. The creature started frantically beating against his shoulder with her armstubs, but this attempt at retaliation was next to useless. If anything, it felt like a gentle massage…and the Jerkop didn't mind this at all.

"Does anyone have any idea where we even are?" asked Matt.

"We took a left at the last junction…that would put us right somewhere under the north side of the abandoned zone." Zoey looked up, shining her flashlight across the tunnels until she spotted a blue rappel line hanging down from the ceiling all the way at the other end of the room. "There. Looks like another squad came through here before us."

"Steve's?"

The Jerkop shook her head. "Maybe. Probably not. We use grey ropes, remember? I think this one's from a Hogwash squad. What the fuck were they doing out here?"

"Does it matter?" Jexis asked dryly.

"Everything matters, Cadet," replied Zoey. "The rope's new. They must have rappelled down earlier tonight and gone hunting in those tunnels over there – the ones that lead to Scrapland. Otherwise, we would've seen feral corpses and footprints and…"

Jexis glanced around. "And?"

"No. Listen." A huge smile broke across Matt's face. "They finally stopped! YES!"

Kevin could have sworn he heard the "Hallelujah Chorus" playing somewhere off in the distance. Indeed, the two ferals had gone quiet. Now that he thought about it, they'd actually been quiet for a few minutes now. He just hadn't noticed. Nor had the rest of the Honey Badgers.

"Whatever you do, _don't startle them_," hissed Jexis. "They probably got all stressed out and tired after screaming so much and just crashed into slumber."

"Nope. Wrong." Matt opened his bag a mere crack and peered inside at the captive Sonee. "This one's still up and about. Kevin, check yours."

The Jerkop slung the bag off his shoulder and carefully peeled back the cloth. The Rosey glanced up at him as his flashlight beam shone across her green reptilian eyes, but she didn't cry or scream or even give him a "goo-goo." There was only silence from the prisoner. Silence…and a strangely baleful stare. Kevin hurriedly tied its burlap cell back together.

"Same here," he said confusedly. "Guess they just gave up or something."

"Let's hope." Jexis' eyes darted around the room, scanning each dark nook and cranny in turn for signs of movement. "I don't like this place. Let's just get up to the surface and find Steve."

"Agreed," replied Zoey. "Nick, you climb up first and make sure the area's secure. Jexis, you follow him up, then Matt, then Kevin. I'll go last."

"No argument here," said Nick with audible relief. "Just wait until I give you the all clear signal to…"

"_Hg…gh…help…"_

Zoey whirled toward the rasping voice and raised her AK-47. "PVCC! Identify yourself!" She gestured to Kevin and Matt. "Flank it. Go!"

The two Jerkops stepped forward hesitantly, drawing their guns at the same time. Kevin circled around to the right and held his pistol steady, making sure he stayed well behind Matt's line of fire. If Matt was as jumpy as he was at the moment, it was more than likely a few wayward shotgun blasts would end up being loosed off.

"_Help!"_ The voice was louder now, and much more urgent. The speaker sounded as if he or she were injured, badly. Kevin sidestepped around a line of pipes and aimed his flashlight down to the end of the room.

There. Crumpled in a heap against a support column, a single human figure lay shuddering and weak, gasping for breath as the two men hurried over. Upon closer inspection, Kevin realized it was a young man he'd never seen before, clad in light body armor and a PVCC logo jacket with a lightning bolt and a heart engraved onto his Jerkop badge.

"Clear!" yelled Matt. "Looks like we found one of those Sweetbolts." He knelt beside the injured operative. "Jexis! We got a man hurt over here!"

"Hey." Kevin spoke softly. "Listen, we've got a medic coming to help you out. Can you tell us your name? Mine's Kevin, and this is Matt."

"Hi," coughed the Jerkop. Kevin noticed a spatter of blood on his pale lips. "Brad…"

"Okay, Brad, can you tell us what happened? Where's the rest of your squad?"

"Came down here to hide…" Brad shivered violently, and Kevin thought for a moment that he might have been going into shock. "Angel killed our spotters…we roped down to wait her out…they were all waiting for us when we landed."

"What?" Matt was interested now. "What did he say about an angel?"

"I think he's hallucinating. We need to get him back to HQ before he loses too much blood." Kevin slid over to let Jexis through. Her medical kit was out and open, and now was the time to let her do what she did best. "Brad, what was waiting for you? Ferals?"

The injured Jerkop nodded and groaned softly. "Hundreds…hundreds of 'em. She drove us right into them. Yuri and a…a few others climbed back up…they're probably dead too. I got…one of 'em chomped my foot and I lost my grip…took M-M-Mindy down with me. They…goddamn it…they ate her and left me…here…" Brad let out a choking sob as Jexis began pouring disinfectant into the bite marks on his chest. "They're gonna…they're gonna come back for me. You gotta get me up…back to the surface. Angel's prob-probably gone."

"Angel?" Jexis looked up. "What the hell's he talking about?"

"Can we make a stretcher or something to carry him?" asked Matt. "Or…wait. Brad, how does your back feel?"

"It's…fine…y-you can just lift me up."

"Okay. Kevin, you get his legs."

Brad stifled a groan of pain as Matt and Kevin hauled him up off the ground. Jexis had managed to stop most of the bleeding, but the Jerkop was still incredibly weak. He'd have to be tied to the rope and lifted up to the surface if they wanted to get him out of here in one piece. The ferals had savaged him terribly, but luckily for him, they'd been more interested in poor Mindy. All he'd sustained in terms of injury was a good collection of deep bites and severe bruising. It would be safe to send him up via rappel.

Zoey was waiting for them when they returned with their injured comrade, but Nick was nowhere in sight. Glancing up, Kevin noticed that the manhole cover had been prized loose.

"Holy shit. What happened?" asked Zoey as Kevin and Matt placed Brad down on the floor at her feet.

"Ferals got him," replied Matt. He reached for the end of the rappel line and gave it a few tugs, estimating its length. "Is Nick up there? I think we're gonna need to send someone else up to help lift this guy out of here."

"You go," insisted Kevin. "You're stronger than I am. I'll help Zoey tie him off."

"Good. See you up there." Matt grabbed the rope and began climbing as fast as he could. The bagged Sonee swung back and forth violently, but still didn't make a sound. Kevin was beginning to feel a bit uneasy with all this silence now. It was as if someone had simply switched on a mute button for both of the captive ferals. Not that he minded, but it just seemed…unusual.

"Okay!" Matt called down from the top of the rope. "Just give me a shout when you're ready for us to lift!"

"Will do!" Zoey shouted back. "Right, pass me that rope. Jexis, does he have a spine injury or anything?"

The medic shook her head. She seemed restless and upset. "No, he's fine. Can we just hurry up? I keep hearing noises in the walls."

"Take it easy, Cadet. Breathe." Zoey eased Brad's legs up and looped the rope once around his knees, once around his waist. "Kevin, lift up his shoulders."

"I'm serious. Guys?" Jexis started backing up until she was about two feet from the rappel line. "Zoey, can't I do anything to get us out of here faster?"

"Yeah." The Jerkop stood up and gave the rope a tug. "Just stop panicking. Matt! We're ready!"

"Okay!" a faint voice called from the distant manhole. "One! Two! THREE!"

With a mighty heave, Brad's body rose up off the ground as Nick and Matt pulled on the rope with all their might. Bit by bit, the injured Jerkop ascended toward the light, leaving the three Honey Badgers temporarily stranded down below. Kevin only hoped the two men up top could get Brad untied pretty quickly. He'd just about had enough of sewer crawling for one night.

"Come on, come on, come on," muttered Jexis, trembling impatiently as the airborne body neared the halfway point. "Come on, hurry up. Hurry up."

"Take it easy," repeated Zoey, though truthfully, she herself was beginning to feel a similar sense of dread creeping over her body. "It shouldn't take too long. Hey, if it'll make you feel better, you can go up next. Believe me, I want out of this place as much as you d-"

"Goo-goo."

Kevin whirled around. The noise hadn't come from the Rosey on his back. Before he knew it, his pistol was out and in his hand. Stepping forward, he directed his flashlight beam into the darkness.

Ten yards away, a single Sonee squirmed out of a hole in one of the larger pipes and dropped a few feet to the ground with a soft _smack_. It stood up, shook itself all over, then turned to face the Jerkop intruders.

"Goo-goo," it repeated. This time, the sound did not go unanswered.

"Goo-goo!"

"Goo-gaa!"

"Wosey!"

"Seeeeee!

"Gaa-gaa!"

"Nee!"

"Oh…my…God…" gasped Zoey as the thunderous clatter of dozens upon dozens of tiny footsteps filled the pipes around them.

With a collective "YAY!", a vast swarm of chu larvae poured out of the pipes like an army of pink and yellow termites – the Sonees and skirtless Roseys dropping down from the lowest holes and the skirted Roseys parachuting from the higher exits. One of the largest pipes groaned and burst in a spray of rust, unleashing a flood of ferals from its innards. At the sight of the Jerkops and a prospective meal, the hungry chus cried out in joy and began waddling right towards them, blocking off both exits in a sea of furry little bodies.

Kevin felt his insides turn to water as the horde closed in around them. There must have been hundreds…maybe even a thousand. And more were arriving with every passing second. He, Zoey, and Jexis were cows in a piranha-filled river, and now there was blood in the water.

"What do we do?" yelled Jexis as she reached for the MP5 on her back. "Zoey! ZOEY!"

Zoey leveled her AK-47 at the thickest concentration of chus and squeezed the trigger. "FIRE! OPEN FIRE!"

The Kalashnikov barked and spat like a rabid dog, sowing bloody death left and right among the oncoming swarm. Jexis and Kevin immediately started firing at every feral they could see, laying down a suppressive field of submachine gun rounds and 9mm bullets.

And still, the horde advanced.

In a matter of seconds, the Jerkops had cut down fifteen larvae. A Rosey's severed armstub sailed backward into the crowd, trailing blood and ragged veins like crepe streamers. Two Sonees flew apart beneath a barrage of fire from Zoey's AK, their chubby bodies exploding into showers of bone and gore. Further back, one of Kevin's bullets caught a Sonee in the throat and tore its jugular wide open, drenching the surrounding chus with a hot spray of blood. Jexis dropped to one knee and emptied her magazine in a wide arc, dropping half a dozen Sonees and Roseys in their tracks. One of the stricken Roseys had her leg shot away and collapsed with a scream of pain. She was immediately trampled into the ground by her comrades.

_BANG!_ Kevin blasted a Sonee through the eye and unloaded the rest of his rounds into a small pack of chus. Ejecting the empty clip, he slammed another one into his pistol and began picking off ferals one by one with headshots. Every shot struck home. At this range and with so many of them, they weren't at all hard to hit. It also helped that their misshapen heads were nearly fifty percent larger than their bodies. Gritting his teeth, the Jerkop fired again and again, no longer concerned with escape. They had no rope, and with so many Sonees and Roseys advancing on them, it would only be a matter of seconds - a minute at most - before they were overrun.

Beside him, Jexis and Zoey had formed a triangle with Kevin inside the circle of light projected by the manhole. The teenager was firing in short, controlled bursts, suppressing any groups of ferals who tried to charge forward. Zoey, on the other hand, was shooting directly from the hip, spraying bullets every which way she could. There was no telling just how many the three of them had killed so far, but Kevin was willing to estimate that the number was around forty or fifty at the moment.

_Fwump! Fwump!_

"SEEEEEEEEEE!"

"WOSEY!"

Kevin whirled around, just in time to see two Roseys parachuting down from a high pipe, straight toward the back of Jexis's unprotected neck.

"JEXIS!"

_BANG! BANG!_ Two heavy bullets zipped down from above and punched a pair of gaping holes straight through the airborne ferals. Jexis sidestepped the corpses as they fell, then quickly kicked them away into the mob's path.

"Thanks!" she yelled to Kevin, and blasted another Rosey to pieces with a barrage of SMG fire.

"Wasn't me!" Kevin shouted back as the coiled rope unraveled and struck the ground beside him. Up on the street, Nick lay prone with his rifle aimed down into the manhole, and was now taking out targets in the crowd with deadly accuracy.

"GO! GO!" Zoey frantically pushed Jexis towards the rope and kicked away a Sonee that was gnawing on her boot. "JERKOPS, WE ARE LEAVING!"

Kevin shoved his pistol into the waist of his jeans and dashed for the rappel line. Gripping the rope with numb fingers, he clenched his knees together and hauled himself off the ground. Zoey was right behind him, screaming savage battle cries and whacking Sonees and Roseys with her rifle stock as the feral swarm closed in around her.

"WOSEY!"

Kevin felt the chu land on his shoulder and immediately whipped his head to the side, knocking it off. The Rosey plummeted a foot and then parachuted the rest of the way to the ground.

"Zoey, COME ON!" he yelled.

Zoey stowed her AK-47, took a step backwards, and grabbed the rope, winding it tightly around one hand. With her other, she drew the pistol holstered on her belt and tucked it under her arm. Moments after her feet lifted off the ground, the ferals clashed together like a tidal wave from all directions, enveloping the floor in a moving carpet of garish pink and yellow fuzz. A few tried to grab the rope and shimmy up after their escaping dinner, but even with the benefit of natural static cling, their armstubs simply couldn't take their weight for such a distance. The unfortunate babies managed to get maybe two feet tops, then simply gave up entirely and dropped back on top of their comrades.

Below him, Kevin could hear Zoey laughing in hysterical relief as she climbed the rappel line. He would have liked to join in, but his heart currently felt like it was going at about a million beats per minute. Hand over hand, he followed Jexis up towards the circle of light.

"W-W-WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

The Rosey on his back snuffled a few times and began crying once again, but this time, Kevin didn't care in the slightest.

"So that's what you two fuckballs were up to," he murmured to the bagged chu as its bawling grew louder. "Thought you'd call all your little friends to eat us up, didn't you? Well I've got news for you, heartsweet, Honey Badgers don't gi…"

"Seeee! Seeeeeeeeeeee!"

Kevin glanced down to make sure Zoey wasn't watching and gave the bag a few hard slaps, right across where he knew the occupant's fuzzy face would be. He made sure not to damage the Rosey _too_ much…just enough so its tiny brain might make a connection between loud noises and pain. Unfortunately, these _were_ Christian Weston Chandler's creations, and thus, learning from experience wasn't exactly their strong point.

"WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

The Jerkop smiled. It was worth it. Above him, Jexis pulled herself up and out of the manhole, flopping over onto the street like a landed fish. Kevin climbed the last few feet to the surface and grabbed Nick's offered hand, then dumped his squirming captive down on the asphalt once he was safely out of the sewer.

"Is she all right?" asked Matt, pointing to the burlap bag.

Kevin stared back in disbelief. "Is _SHE_ all right?"

"Just kidding." Matt pulled his friend in for a shaky hug. "What happened? Anyone hurt?"

"Ferals swarmed us," coughed Kevin. "Brought a whole damn army. The crying drew them in. They must have been watching us for a while…I think Brad was some sort of bait."

Matt looked puzzled. "They can do that?"

"Yeah. Remember, that's how they got Jake."

"All right, fun's over. Let's _never_ do that again," growled Zoey as she dusted herself off and picked up her AK-47. "Everyone sound off."

One by one, the Honey Badgers called out their names. Matt and Kevin made sure to include their two prisoners and Brad in the roll call as well. The wounded Sweetbolt had finally succumbed to the heavy dose of Valium that Jexis had given him, and now lay sleeping on the ground beside the open manhole.

"Okay." The squad leader smiled and tapped her walkie-talkie. "I'd say it's time to get the hell out of here. Sonee squad, this is Rosey squad, come back. Over."

Several seconds of static passed before Zoey tried again.

"Sonee squad, Rosey squad, come back. I repeat, Sonee squad, this is Rosey squad, come back. Steve, we're out of the sewers and we've captured two live ferals. Over."

There was no response. Kevin clenched his fingers into fists and sat down, gritting his teeth in frustration. It didn't seem fair at all. They'd almost died trying to get out of that sewer, and now Steve wasn't even answering. A dozen different scenarios of Sonee squad's fate flashed through his mind. Maybe they'd been trapped down in the sewers as well. Maybe their radios weren't working. Maybe they were in a firefight. Or maybe they were just all dead. That last option was looking more and more likely with every passing second.

Zoey sighed in irritation and clicked her transmitter again. "Sonee squad, Rosey squad, come back…please come back. Steve, if you can hear this, we're…"

"GET OFF THE STREETS! GET OUT OF THE STREETS!"

Kevin leapt to his feet and drew his pistol as the Jerkops around him scrambled to do the same. It took him a few seconds to locate the speaker, but finally he noticed a man waving to them from the ground floor window of a dilapidated apartment building. He nudged Zoey and pointed.

"PVCC! Identify yourself!" she yelled, taking aim at the stranger with her assault rifle.

"PVCC, Sweetbolt squad, based in Hogwash! For God's sake, get your team off the street before she sees you!"

"We've got one of your men here!" shouted Zoey. "Brad, right? You know him?"

"Yeah, I know him! He's still alive? Get him in here as fast as you can! Come on!" The Jerkop beckoned to them. "Please! We can't let her know we're here!"

Zoey glanced back at Nick and Matt. "You two, carry him. Kevin, Jexis, cover the rear. Let's move!"

The Honey Badgers hurriedly collected their belongings and replaced the manhole cover, then made their way up the street toward the apartment. Matt and Nick held Brad by the shoulders and legs, bearing the sleeping man at the center of their miniature convoy.

"Oh, God, it's good to see you, whoever you are!" exclaimed the Sweetbolt as the five Jerkops neared the front of the building. "I got separated from the rest of my unit when we got attacked further up the block…I ran back and I've been working my way from building to building ever since she…"

"Hold on, hold on." Zoey raised a hand and stared directly at the man. "Shut up for a minute. First off, I'm Zoey. We're part of the Honey Badgers, based in Slumberland. Now tell us your name."

"Yuri…It's Yuri," replied the Jerkop. "You guys are from Slumberland? Really? What are you doing over…"

"Not important," snapped Zoey. "Second of all, what the hell are you talking about when you say 'her?'"

"The fuckin' Angel of Death, lady," Yuri growled fearfully and scratched his frizzy hair as he glanced at the sky. "Took out three of my squadmates…and maybe the rest, unless they made it off the street. Come on, get in here! Quick!" He disappeared from the window, and seconds later, Kevin heard a _click_ as Yuri unlocked the apartment's front door. "Hurry! She's been circling the whole abandoned zone for the last two hours!"

Kevin looked at Jexis and mouthed _What the hell is he talking about?_

_No idea,_ replied the medic silently.

Zoey nodded and turned to Matt and Nick. "Okay, get him inside."

The two Jerkops hoisted Brad's body up and carried him gingerly up the front steps and through the door. Yuri stepped aside to let them through, then beckoned to the rest of the squad.

"Right, let's go." Zoey shouldered her AK-47 and headed for the door. Jexis and Kevin followed eagerly. The ten-story building seemed to be a fair shelter in terms of size, and would make a good temporary base of operations for the operatives until they could get some backup, or else contact Steve's squad. What it lacked in structural integrity, it more than made up for in scale.

"After you," Kevin chuckled as they reached the top of the stairs, and gestured for Jexis to go through the door ahead of him.

"Oh, how chivalrous." The medic rolled her eyes, but stepped forward nonetheless. "Come on, Kevin. If you're done being such a gentleman, we've got a man wounded in he-"

_WHUMP!_

Something huge smashed into Kevin and grabbed him from the side, knocking the air right out of his lungs as if he'd been hit by a speeding train. Jexis's scream of terror sounded for a whole half a second, then was swallowed up by the wind rushing in his ears. Fighting to stay conscious, he could only gasp frantically for air as the large picture window of a nearby Gamestop grew larger and larger in his peripheral vision…

_Crash!_ The window shattered instantly as the airborne Jerkop and his aggressor plowed right through the glass, scattering dusty Playstation 2s, Gamecubes, and empty game boxes all over the store. Winded, Kevin tried to shield his face from the flying glass shards, but received a painful cut across his left cheek all the same. The thing let him go as they both struck the nearest display stand and knocked it over. Kevin went flying in one direction while the winged creature flapped and struggled to free itself from the tangle of shelves and old copies of _Ratchet and Clank_, _Metal Gear Solid_, and _Super Smash Bros. Melee_. Only when he slammed into a huge rack full of _Guitar Hero_ controllers did his flight finally come to a stop.

"Aggghhh…" groaned Kevin as the plastic guitars clattered down on top of him. Clutching at the floor, he crawled a few inches forward and immediately collapsed from the pain. Every single one of his bones felt as if it was on fire, and his field of vision was surrounded by encroaching black fog. Seemingly miles away, the sounds of the thrashing beast echoed endlessly across the darkened fields of his brain, hammering molten iron spikes straight down into his…

_eeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEE…POP!_

Blood rushed back into Kevin's face as his eardrums strained and popped, immediately releasing his mind from its muddled state. The pain in his ribs quickly slowed to a dull ache, and suddenly he could breathe again. The Jerkop had no idea what had just happened, but all he knew now was that whatever had snatched him up was still in the Gamestop with him, and unless this had all been some hugely contrived misunderstanding, it wanted him dead.

Kevin leapt to his feet and grabbed the nearest blunt object in sight – a light blue _Guitar Hero_ controller. Readying it like a baseball bat, he took a few steps back towards the store entrance, keeping one eye on the collapsed pile of shelves and games where he knew the creature was buried.

_Wait, what am I doing?_ he thought suddenly, tossing the useless piece of plastic away and unsheathing George's hunting knife. The pistol had been knocked clean out of his hands by the sudden impact, and now the best thing he had left to defend himself with was the first real weapon he'd ever been given. _If I survive this, I'll make sure I get it back to you, old man._

The thing could fly…that at least was obvious. If he ran out into the streets, it would be on him like a hawk on a mouse. If he stayed, he wasn't sure how well he could defend himself against something as fast and powerful as this monster. That left only one option - go where it couldn't fly so easily.

The alleys.

Knife in hand, Kevin sprinted for the utility door just as something white and winged burst out of the pile and lunged at him with a ferocious shriek. He saw a glint of silver in the corner of his eye, but paid it no regard. He was almost there…almost there…

_Wham!_

Kevin smashed through the rusty door, nearly breaking it right off its hinges in his haste. Wasting no time, he whirled around and slammed it shut as a curved silver blade plunged right through the metal and stopped two inches from his face. Horrified, Kevin lunged backward and kicked out with both of his feet, smacking the door closed just as his pursuer tried to force it open on him. Another scream of anger and frustration rang out from the opposite side. With a hideous scraping noise, the silver blade retracted, leaving only a single thin slit right through the door.

Before the creature could ready another strike, Kevin was already up and running for the rear exit in the back of the storage room. There had to be an alley back here…somewhere. He found the door and quickly slipped through, just as the creature broke through the first door with a heavy _crash_.

His heart hammering against his ribs, the Jerkop stumbled backward and fell down the steps, landing on his side in a puddle of water. Something warm and sticky was dripping down his back. For a moment, he panicked, fearing that a big shard of glass had impaled him, but oddly enough, the pain wasn't there. Kevin stood up and turned, craning his neck to the right.

_Oh. Well, that explains it._

The burlap sack on his shoulder was still there, but it had been squashed flat. A thick dark red stain was soaking out of it into his shirt. Chuckling to himself, Kevin shrugged off the bag and opened it up to see what had happened to the occupant.

What remained of the Rosey could best be described as the contents of a sloppy joe and a rotisserie chicken, if both had been put through a giant food processor. It had been crushed like an insect under a flyswatter, splattered all over the inside of the bag in a mess of shredded meat, organs, bone shards, and fatty tissue. Scraps of blood-soaked cloth lay here and there - the remnants of its skirt and bow. A single green eyeball rested in the middle of the disgusting slurry, staring sightlessly out at Kevin.

"Ugh." Kevin lowered the bag and coughed as the reek of death reached his nose. It was almost enough to make him forget that he was still being pursued by some murderous airborne hunter.

_CRASH!_

The Gamestop's back door burst open. Without thinking, Kevin heaved the bag with the dead feral at the creature and ran for his life. A gruesome _splat_ sounded behind him, followed by a shriek of rage and disgust as the thing presumably took the entire mess of crushed Rosey parts straight to the face. If he hadn't been in mortal danger, Kevin probably would have collapsed from laughing so hard.

Up ahead, the alley ended at the street. Paying no regard to the minor possibility of oncoming traffic, the Jerkop hurled himself out of the tight passage and dashed out into the middle of the road. He needed to get away…as far away from this thing as he could…

The searchlight snapped on like a dramatic light from heaven in some biblical play. Kevin half-expected to hear God's deep, omniscient voice talking to him. Instead, he was greeted by the nasal, incessantly irritating and nauseatingly familiar sound of a Sonichu's voice, amplified through a police megaphone.

"_EHPF! EHPF! DROP YOUR WEAPON AND GET YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR, JERKOP!"_

Kevin didn't move. Instead, he merely raised his hand and clenched George's hunting knife between his middle and ring fingers. The squad of Sonichus might have been expecting a quick and clean surrender, but instead found themselves staring directly at the biggest, sharpest, and deadliest middle finger they'd ever seen in their lives.

"Fuck you and fuck Chandler!" yelled Kevin as he brandished the blade defiantly. Inside, his heart was pounding with fear, but he maintained an air of bravado nonetheless. If he was going to end up in a Feeding Day pile, he wasn't going without a fight.

"_I SAID, DROP YOUR WEAPON, YOU F***ING JERK!"_ yelled the Sonichu. It made sure to automatically bleep out the curse – courtesy of another mental block that Chandler had implanted in the second generation of chus when he engineered them from the true and original Sonichu and Rosechu's DNA. _"IF YOU DO NOT COMPLY, WE WILL BE FORCED TO USE OUR ZAPPIN'…UH…FORCE!"_

The Jerkop laughed mockingly. "If you're trying to scare me, it's not working. Come over here and let's dance, Sparky!"

"_I AM NOT A 'SPARKY!' I AM AN ORIGINAL ELECTRIC HEDGEHOG POKÉMON, CREATED BY THE LAWFUL AND HONEST MAYOR OF CWCVILLE, CHRISTIAN WESTON CH-"_

"I'm sorry, what was that?" Kevin faked a yawn. "I can't hear you over the sound of how bored I am. You gonna arrest me, or do I have to go through a cavity search first? Heard you guys like doing those."

"_WHAT ? I AM NOT A HOMO, YOU DIRTY SLANDEROUS TROLL!"_

"Still in denial, huh? That's okay, it sometimes takes a few years for people to discover their true sexua-"

Kevin jumped back as a Thundershock arced across the street and impacted a full five feet from where he'd been standing. He was well out of range of the Sonichus' attacks, and there didn't seem to be any mercenaries with them, but they were still much, much faster than he was. He had to tread carefully now.

"Listen, why don't we just forget this little incident ever happened and I'll go volunteer at a Soup Hotel for the next three years or something?" he suggested, while scanning the surrounding buildings for any possible exits.

"_UH, NO. NO, THE MAYOR HAS MADE IT VERY CLEAR THAT ALL JERKOPS ARE TO BE PUNISHED UPON THEIR ARREST."_

"So what are you waiting for?" Kevin spread his arms out to the sides. "All I've got is a knife. You're Electric-types. You know what? Maybe you've got a point. Here, I'll put one hand behind my back and make it a fair fight. Jesus, how the hell do you pussies even arrest anyone, huh?"

_WHUMP!_

The Jerkop spun around as the winged creature landed on the street behind him. The EHPF officers reflexively backed away a couple of feet, but returned to their positions once they realized who had arrived. A few even smiled and chuckled knowingly. The sound of their laughter sent an icy shiver running straight down Kevin's back.

Standing before him was what would have been a completely white Rosechu, if it hadn't been for the splashes of drying Rosey blood that now covered her face and neck. Apart from a single silver cross on a chain around her neck, she was completely naked, unlike the common pink Rosechus who always wore dresses. What lady parts she had were obscured by a thick layer of white fur, and two feathery wings were furled up against her back, like an angel's wings. A silver sickle was clutched in her hand, covered with old bloodstains and scratches from the battles of years past.

The Angel of Death. The White Reaper.

Angelica Rosechu.

"Oh, God," Kevin gasped.

"God cannot hear you, heretic," hissed Angelica, and took a step towards her victim. "The Lo0rd has sent me to do His will, and I will not suffer your blasphemies." She raised her sickle. "Repent. Confess your sins and be saved. Refuse, and you will burn with the heathens and homosexuals for all eternity."

"You're no saint," Kevin snarled in utter, helpless hatred. "You were just sent by the Mayor to do the work of a false g-AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHHH!"

"Pathetic." Angelica licked a drop of fresh blood from her sickle as the Jerkop reeled away, clutching at the gash in his cheek that she'd just reopened with a single cut. "Oh, you resist now, heretic, but in the end, you'll weep. They all weep when the light of the Lo0rd shines upon them. And as you have anointed me with the blood of innocents…"

"Innocent? Them?" Kevin let out a panicked laugh as he fought to hold his slashed face together. "They ate my friend, you fucking bitch. They eat all the bodies you throw down into the sewers. They're about as innocent as that fat blubbering retard you call a mayor."

"The Sonees and Roseys are all God's chosen children, just as I am His daughter," Angelica said loftily, ignoring Kevin's jab at Mayor Chandler. "They are but helpless little lambs in a world of lions. Lions like you and your heathen friends in the PVCC. But does the Bible not say that one day, the lion shall lay down with the lamb? In the end, you will rest with God's children, and perhaps in death, you will find atonement for the ones you have slain in life." The white Rosechu's eyes narrowed, and a cruel smile spread across her face. "But perhaps not. Perhaps you will atone for your sins by feeding the hungry…the weak…the innocent."

Kevin spun the knife in his hand. "Come get some, Mother Superior."

"Suffer the little children, and let them come to me," chanted the white Rosechu as she raised her sickle and began circling the Jerkop like a vulture circling its prey. "Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven."

Kevin gritted his teeth and readied the knife to strike. If Heaven was to be his fate, he would do his best to make sure Angelica Rosechu went the other way.

"Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses," Angelica continued, "as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver…"

"Wosey! Goo-goo!"

Both Kevin and his executioner turned in surprise to see a single pink blob appear out of an abandoned Indian restaurant near the EHPF blockade. The feral Rosey was all on its own, happy as a clam, smiling that insipid little harelip smile and cooing softly as it waddled its way toward the astonished Sonichus. It had most likely heard the racket from inside and wandered out to investigate.

"Goo-goo!" it exclaimed joyfully.

"Well well," said Angelica with affection. "So the lamb comes to pasture."

Kevin ignored her and directed his attention toward the Rosey. A few of the Sonichus were crowding around it, looking down in adoration as the tiny creature giggled and blushed. The feral seemed pleased to be receiving so much attention from its elders. Typical behavior…it _was_ one of Chandler's creations, after all.

"Aww, you're a pwetty widdle Wosey," said one of the closest officers, and bent down to pick it up.

"Wosey!" cried the Rosey happily as two big gloved hands encircled her and lifted her up off the street. The Sonichu cradled her in his arms, rocking her back and forth about as clumsily as possible. It was more than obvious he'd never held a baby before…that was supposed to be a Rosechu's job. The feral didn't seem to mind though, as long as the big yellow things kept giving her love and attention.

"Awe you hungwy, widdle Wosey?" asked another Sonichu in an unbelievably annoying nasal twee voice. "Well, we just caught a big nasty Jerkop for you and your friends to munch on! Y'all can come and eat as much as you want!"

"YAY!" The Rosey clapped her armstubs together, excited by the promise of fresh meat.

"Hang on a sec, what's this?" The EHPF officer noticed something down near the Rosey's waist. Pulling down its skirt a few centimeters, he carefully spread the short peach-colored fur apart to reveal a ragged wound in its belly. "Awwww, what happened to you, sweetie? Did one of the big mean jerks give you a nasty boo-boo?"

"Looks pretty bad," commented another Sonichu in a more serious tone. "Take her skirt off. I want to see."

"You sound like a pedofork," a third chu chuckled.

Gently, the Sonichu holding the Rosey eased its skirt down, only to find that the grievous incision ran all the way to its crotch. A line of crude stitches crisscrossed the cut, as if someone had opened up the feral for some kind of hasty surgery and then sewed it back together.

"GodBear, will ya look at that…" The officer beside him leaned over to inspect the odd wound. "We need to get her to CWCville General. Come on, put her into the…"

A red light blinked on inside the Rosey, flashing straight through her belly fur. The little chu immediately started wailing, thrashing her armstubs and legs around in utter agony as an electronic beeping noise emanated from her guts.

"WAAAAAAHHHH! WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYY!"

_Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!_

"WHAT THE F-"

_BOOM!_

The Sonichu and two of his friends flew apart before the one holding the Rosey could finish his shout of terror, splattering all over the adjacent cruisers as the feral exploded in his arms like a fuzzy grenade. Kevin yelled and covered his face, but was knocked flat by the force of the blast. Burning scraps of bloody yellow fur and lumps of flesh rained down from above, covering himself, Angelica, and the shocked EHPF survivors with drops of blood and gory chunks of chu meat. A single smoldering pink bow drifted away on the gentle night breeze, mingling with the dark cloud of smoke that billowed from the remains of the three Sonichus.

"HOLY S***!" screamed another officer.

As Kevin staggered upright, he felt a gloved hand circle around the back of his neck and constrict, tightening into a death grip. Angelica had him. With a mighty heave, she hoisted the Jerkop off the ground.

"The Bear will judge you, heretic," she hissed in his ear, and swept the sickle up toward Kevin's neck. There was nothing he could do but close his eyes and wait for the sharp bite of cold silver.

"SURPRISE, BITCH!"

_Shick!_

Angelica shrieked in pain and dropped Kevin to the ground as three jagged steel blades erupted from her shoulder. Whirling around, she screamed a fierce battle cry and dealt the attacker a mighty blow with her jagged tailbolt, sending it flying backward a full three yards. The mystery woman crashed down onto the street and rolled over and over, the bloodied metal claws on her hand rasping as they scraped against the pavement.

It was only when he caught a flash of teal paint on the newcomer's face that Kevin realized who had just saved his life.

"KURI!"

"AMBUSH!" an EHPF officer screamed. "ZAP 'EM! ZAP 'EM ALL-"

_BANG!_

The Sonichu collapsed against his police cruiser, clutching at his neck where a shot from Steve's Colt Python had torn a ragged hole straight through it. Decapitating the dying chu with two ferocious swings from his kukri, the Jerkop spun and raised the revolver toward his next victim.

"SEND 'EM TO HELL!" he roared, and opened fire.

"COVER! COVER!" yelled one of the five remaining Sonichus, and dashed out of Steve's line of sight before the bullets could strike home. Clenching his teeth, he felt a massive bolt of energy building in his cheekspots, growing stronger and stronger with every second. The Jerkop might have just killed one of his teammates, but he wouldn't stand a chance against a fully-charged Thundershock.

Too late he heard the horrifying _whoosh_ of approaching flames from the store display window behind him.

"Burn, you Sparky bastard!" screamed Allie as Trogdor the Burninator ejected a billowing stream of fire all over the cowering EHPF officer. Trapped between a wall of flames and a police cruiser, there was simply nowhere he could run. Even if the chu possessed the characteristic super speed of Sonic the Hedgehog himself, there was no possible way that the Jerkop could have missed.

"AAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHHH! NOOOOOOOOO!"

Drenched in burning fuel, the Sonichu could only shriek and writhe in agony as the fire blazed around him, igniting his fur and headspikes instantly. Allie could see his skin charring, peeling away to reveal blackening muscles beneath. The chu's misshapen, gelatinous fused eyeball shriveled and burst from the heat, leaking a milky fluid into the inferno. Finally, mercifully, it fell to its knees and died with a terrified, primordial squeal reminiscent of a Sonee's death cry.

Further down the street, two other officers were in the process of creeping around the blockade to get a better shot at Steve when Serge burst through the door of an adjacent pharmacy like a bulldozer made of muscle, rage, and ham sandwiches. Before they could even turn around, the huge Jerkop lashed out with a beefy fist, knocking the foremost Sonichu all the way past unconsciousness and straight into a concussion, followed by subsequent total brain death. It was a miracle its skull even stayed intact.

"How you shock-pig cowards like Serge now? Take Serge's guns, Serge use more gun!" bellowed the giant Russian man as he reached for the RPD on his back and swung the heavy machine gun in a ferocious arc straight into the second chu's head. The EHPF officer reeled backward, clutching its face and squealing in pain as blood poured out of the shattered black blob that had once been its nose. Before it could recover, Serge jammed the barrel of his RPD into the Sonichu's mouth like a battering ram, breaking most of its teeth with a horrific _crunch_.

Laughing, Serge leaned forward to inspect his victim. The Sonichu was weeping like a baby, pleading silently with its teary eyes and making horrific snuffling noises through the cold steel tube in its smashed mouth.

"You want Serge let you go?" he growled in mock surprise.

The blubbering chu nodded shakily, jerking its head up and down around the RPD barrel. "Pluhrze," it sobbed.

"Then…" Serge braced the machine gun's stock against his shoulder and squeezed its trigger. "CRY SOME MORE, SHOCK-PIG! CRY SOME MORE!"

The middle of the Sonichu's face disintegrated into a red mist as a hail of heavy bullets tore right through its skull and shredded its brain into mush. Serge roared with laughter, reached out, and slid the entire chu right down the barrel, letting it hang there like a grotesque trophy. All the while, he had been laying down a withering barrage of fire right towards the last two EHPF officers.

Kevin struggled to his feet and dashed for safety as Angelica took to the air and swooped down at Kuri, sickle in hand. With no time to pull herself back up, the teal-painted operative rolled aside seconds before the curved silver blade _ding_ed against the street. Drawing her heavy butcher knife, Kuri stabbed out with a scream of anger, driving the thick blade straight through the Rosechu's calf.

"AAAGGGGHHH! YOU BLASPHEMOUS WHORE!" screeched Angelica, and delivered a heavy kick to Kuri's abdomen with her other foot. Wrenching the knife out of her leg, she flung it away and limped towards her prone, gasping opponent. The wound had crippled her temporarily, but the accelerated healing ability that every Chaotic Combo member had would have her back to full health within a couple of minutes.

Kuri, on the other hand, did not possess such a luxury. The wind had been completely knocked out of her and it looked as though Angelica's kick had bruised a few ribs. Her horned hairband skittered across the street and finally came to a halt at the edge of a gutter, but fortunately didn't fall in. The Jerkop lay crumpled on the asphalt, wheezing for breath as the Rosechu approached for the final blow.

_BOOM!_

Angelica dove away as a shot from Amanda's grenade launcher cratered the street beside her. A few of her pinion feathers smoldered, but she herself remained unharmed.

"My turn!" shouted the black woman as she snapped open the metal tube and popped another high-explosive round into the breech. "Fried chicken for everyone! EAT IT, MOTHERFUCKER!"

_BOOM!_

The grenade exploded right below Angelica's feet, just as she unfurled her wings and shot into the air to escape the blast. Amanda hurriedly reached for another explosive, but Kuri had already jumped back to her feet and was now firing her pistol up at the hovering Rosechu. One of the bullets clipped Angelica in the wing, but didn't seem to harm her at all. The wounds on her leg and shoulder had knitted back together and sealed shut, leaving no trace she'd ever been hurt there.

"YOU WILL BURN!" she roared from above. With her bloodstained white fur and a savage snarl across her face, she looked, ironically enough, like a winged demon straight out of hell. "YOU WILL ALL BURN!"

Kuri reached for the wooden hockey stick on her back and drew it out of its sheath silently. With her other hand, she raised the tekko-kagi in a "come hither" gesture, then smeared some of Angelica's blood across her teal-painted face. The dark liquid smoked, shone brightly for half a second, and evaporated. If the Rosechu had been expecting her blood to burn the Jerkop like holy water against demons, she was sadly mistaken.

Infuriated by Kuri's defiance, Angelica whirled her sickle back in forth in the air as if she were a farmer cutting wheat. Her wings beat down upon the flames below, fanning them out behind her into a hellish inferno. Unfazed, Kuri sidestepped over to the gutter and picked up her hairband, sliding the stone horns back onto her head.

"Now then," she growled.

Folding her wings, Angelica dove.

Raising her hockey stick, Kuri waited.

Kevin leaned out from behind the cruiser he was using for cover, just as Steve vaulted over the blockade and blasted a Sonichu twice in the mouth with his revolver. Dodging a flurry of bolts from the dying chu's comrade, he whirled down behind a concrete barrier to avoid a devastating Thundershock. This last EHPF officer wasn't going down without a fight.

But on the other hand, the Sonichu _was_ extremely close to him, and better still, it hadn't spotted him yet. Now if only he had a better weapon…

Two yards away, the thick blood-spattered blade of Kuri's butcher knife gleamed in the light from the streetlamps. Praying that Steve was keeping the last Sonichu busy enough to ignore him, Kevin dashed away from the cruiser and shakily snatched up the weapon. The adrenaline rush from the chase was still wearing off. He only hoped it wouldn't impair what he was about to do.

Behind him, Kuri swung the hockey stick and dealt Angelica a heavy whack, right across the face. Unbeknownst to the Rosechu, Al had modified the business end of the stick so that not only was it sporting a steel-plated razor edge, but also possessed a sheet metal core. The shaft was simply wood, supported by a hollow steel rod inside so it wouldn't break easily under pressure.

So when this weapon came in contact with the airborne Angelica's head, the effect was not only immediate, but also unbelievably satisfying to watch.

_CRACK!_ Angelica spun backwards through the air, blood trailing from a hideous gash on her cheek, her wings fluttering uselessly behind her as she plowed right through the barricade a few feet away from where Kevin was sneaking toward the last EHPF officer. Kuri took off after her with a fierce yell, wielding her bladed hockey stick like the Grim Reaper's scythe.

Before the Jerkop could deliver a much more fatal blow, Angelica was already back on her feet. Her face had been slashed wide open, and a flap of skin hung loose across her cheek, revealing her teeth through the cut. She met the charge with a flurry of furious sickle cuts, forcing Kuri to abandon another heavy swing in lieu of using her tekko-kagi to block the strikes. Steel claws clashed against the silver blade again and again, as both opponents sought an opening. Kuri might have been outmatched by Angelica's sheer strength and battle prowess, but she was lighter, faster, and much more advantaged in terms of planning her strikes.

Unfortunately, that wasn't nearly enough to protect her from the one slash that managed to get through.

"AAAAAGGGGHHH!"

Kuri collapsed screaming, clutching her lacerated arm as Angelica drew back her bloody sickle with a grin. The hockey stick clattered heavily to the street. Tears of pain ran down the wounded Jerkop's face, tracing thin streaks where they touched her teal body paint. The sickle had sliced her right arm right down to the bone, leaving it mutilated and limp. A thick bloodstain soaked into her sweater, turning its rainbow-colored gay pride band a uniform dark red. Holding her useless arm like a sleeping baby, Kuri sobbed in agony and struggled to push herself away with her feet.

"Enough!" screamed Angelica, advancing for the kill. "Victory is mine, whore! The Lo0rd has seen to that! Now repent if you wish…and GO TO HELL!"

Before the Rosechu could finish Kuri once and for all, Allie had stepped between the two combatants, seemingly out of nowhere. Trogdor the Burninator hissed ominously in her arms, and the look on her face was somehow, in that single moment, even more frightening to Angelica than the concept of having lesbian sex with Bubbles.

"No. Not Kuri," the Jerkop growled, and wrenched her flamethrower's trigger back all the way past **EXTRA CRISPY** and **SCORCHED EARTH **to the **BURNINATE** setting – meaning the fuel ejection valve was now one hundred percent open. "_You_ go to hell."

_FWOOSH!_

The white Rosechu only had time to draw a single breath before the colossal fireball enveloped her, setting her feathers and fur alight all at once. Her headspikes blazed bright orange and yellow as they blackened and turned to ash…candlesticks in an inferno. Now she really _did_ look more like a demon than an angel.

With a horrific shriek, Angelica unfurled her burning wings and shot away into the sky, leaving nothing behind but a few smoldering feathers and a thick cloud of ash and smoke. If the Jerkops had done as much damage to her as they believed they'd done, then the Angel of Death would still live, but she wouldn't be coming back anytime soon.

Taking advantage of this distraction, Kevin seized the opportunity and ran straight toward his Sonichu target. Clutching both Kuri's butcher knife and his own blade, he raised both and charged with a yell.

The EHPF officer moved like lightning, darting aside as Kevin hurtled past and slammed into the front door of the nearby police cruiser. Dazed, the Jerkop spun to avoid a retaliatory shock from the chu and leapt forward to drive his blades into its heart. Again, the Sonichu dashed away before he could land the blow, laughing its horrible nasal laugh as it watched him flail about unsuccessfully.

Again and again Kevin lunged, and again and again his target avoided his attacks. The chu was just toying with him, and worse, Steve or Serge couldn't risk shooting it now that one of their own had entered the fray. Kevin felt his already-overstrained muscles beginning to give out and crash into slumber with every unsuccessful strike. Floating in a stupor of shame and fatigue, his thoughts drifted back to that first training session in the Slumberland practice yard.

_What am I supposed to do? I just can't hit the damn things!_

And suddenly, it was as if Steve's head was floating in front of him, explaining exactly what he would need to do to win through the most utterly contrived methods and entire minutes of dialogue compressed into a single worthless piece of advice.

Well, in actuality, Steve's advice was quite a bit simpler than that.

_Strike from where they can't hit you as easily._

Gritting his teeth, Kevin feigned a stab and simply gave up, panting hard for breath as the chu grinned in smug satisfaction. Its cheekspots sparked as a deadly charge built, ready to zap its opponent to the extreme…and into oblivion as well.

Which was exactly what the Jerkop had been waiting for.

Without a word, Kevin lashed out and sent George's knife spinning through the air toward the Sonichu's head. It reflexively twisted away, but not before the steel blade pierced its left cheekspot and buried itself a full two inches into the charged bioelectric organ.

_ZZZZZZAAAAAPPPPPPPP!_

"GAAAHHRGRGRGRHGRHGH!"

The EHPF officer's yell of pain was cut short by a shuddering scream as the entire force of the Thundershock traveled up through the hunting knife and rebounded back into its own face. Unlike the weak little Sonee that Kevin had tried this trick on in the sewers two weeks earlier, this fully grown Sonichu was packing a lot more than a few volts of electricity. The redirected and amplified attack vaporized it completely, leaving only a sparking radio, a belt, the knife, and a huge pile of black ash on the street. The latter was quickly blown away by the wind.

Kevin leaned down, picked up his knife, and slid it back into its sheath. At long last, the nightmare was over.

His legs turned to jelly, and the Jerkop collapsed without a sound.

Across the street, Allie and Amanda were helping Kuri to her feet, taking care not to move her injured arm too much. Serge merely grunted in satisfaction, tore the brained Sonichu off the barrel of his RPD, and tossed it aside almost as easily as a child would throw a doll.

"Busy night, huh?" Steve dropped down from the hood of the EHPF cruiser and sat cross-legged beside him. "That was nice work on that last one, especially for someone with no gun."

"Did…what I could…with what I had," panted the Jerkop, and passed him Kuri's knife.

"Thanks," said Steve. "Here. Rest a bit while I check up on Kuri and the others. You earned it." He dropped his iPod into Kevin's lap and accepted the offered blade. "That's for losing your EHPF-killer virginity tonight. Don't bother changing tracks. Hope you like Journey."

Kevin leaned back against the cruiser and touched the play button. In seconds, his ears were filled with the familiar tune of "Wheel in the Sky." He'd almost died more times than he could count, barely survived an encounter with a member of the Chaotic Combo, and crawled out of a sewer infested with thousands of hungry ferals, but now the only thing he truly felt was pride. Against all odds, he'd finally killed his first Sonichu…and what was more, he'd killed it with George's knife. Kevin was pretty sure there was a fitting metaphor for all of this buried somewhere in the back of his mind, but right now, he wasn't exactly in the mood for any sort of dramatic analysis. All he wanted was a nice warm bed, and ideally, a glass of scotch from Al's private reserve.

Steve rejoined him a few minutes later, accompanied by the rest of his battered squad.

"Looks like you're going to have to come along with us for now," he chuckled, and offered a hand. "Hey, Zoey didn't happen to catch any ferals, did she?"

Kevin grasped Steve's hand and heaved himself off the ground, then followed the Jerkops as they headed for an alley further up toward the end of the block. "Yeah, we captured one of each. I was carrying the Rosey, but it kind of got…lost. They've still got a live Sonee, though."

"Fuck. And we used up our Rosey for the Baby Boomer. Oh well. I'm sick of babysitting the little bastards anyway. Leary's gonna have to make do with what we give him. I think some well-deserved fame and glory might be in store for our little squad."

"Fame, glory, whatever." Allie wiped a layer of sweat and soot from her brow. "I just want a hot shower and a good night's sleep."

"I can guarantee you'll get at least one of those when we get back," replied Steve. "Kuri, how are you doing? You holding up all right?"

Kuri nodded shakily. Her arm was still oozing blood into the sleeve of her sweater, though definitely not as much as before. Kevin noticed that she'd turned extremely pale beneath the layer of teal paint.

"Hang in there, kid." Amanda patted her on the shoulder supportively. "We'll get you home and get that arm all stitched up. You're gonna be back to cookin' up those babies in no time."

"Goddamn, Kuri," Allie laughed, half in relief, half in admiration for what the Honey Badgers had just done. "You realize you just took on _Angelica fucking Rosechu_ up close and personal? I think the word 'badass' might be appropriate here."

"_You_ flamed the bitch. I lost," murmured Kuri weakly. She swayed back and forth as she walked, and Allie quickly moved to her side to steady her. "Thanks, by the way. Owe you one for burning her. Saved my life."

"Oh no. Don't you try and pull that on me," Allie insisted. "I saved your life, and you smashed the single most dangerous flying creature in this city…in the _face_…with a _hockey stick_. We're _even_, and if anything, I owe _you_."

"Well…my arm's dead. Could use help…washing paint off."

Allie scoffed. "Please. It would be my pleasure." She shot a glance over at Kevin, who was now wearing the same expression of surprise one would normally wear upon walking into a room and finding it filled from floor to ceiling with hundred-dollar bills. "Okay, I didn't mean it like that. _I didn't mean it like that!_"

Steve smiled. "Ah…innuendo."

**Forty minutes later, Slumberland garage**

"You absolute motherfucker," Matt whispered to Kevin as Zoey dutifully handed the Sonee prisoner to Alec Benson Leary and saluted. "Of all the things I had to miss…she seriously used that hockey stick?"

Kevin nodded and raised a finger to his lips. He'd never even seen Leary before, much less actually met him in person. The man was quite fat, but carried the weight well, unlike certain mayors. He wore a white lab coat over a dress shirt, slacks, and a tie, and seemed very knowledgeable in the intimate ways of science. Jexis had taken full advantage of Leary's presence and bombarded him with questions concerning chu biology. Steve and Zoey had just been happy to receive handshakes and praise.

"Thank you once again, Miss Francesca, Mr. Morrison," said Leary. Two of his aides stepped forward, bearing a portable dog carrier with old copies of the _CWCville News Dash_ spread across the bottom. He casually shoved the screaming Sonee inside and waved the men away. "You may not realize it now, and it may seem like a simple task all things considered, but your efforts have put Project Asperchu _years_ ahead in terms of progress. The capture of this larval _Navitaricius_ shall mark the beginning of a new era for the PVCC…an era where man shall no longer live in fear of the chus' superior strength and speed."

"Also known as…_this_ era," muttered Allie, and elbowed Kevin playfully. "How does it feel to be a Sonichu slayer, O mighty warrior of Slumberland?"

Kevin gently shoved her. "Ssshhh. I want to hear this."

"As such, Mary Lee Walsh and I have agreed that you and your squadmates all deserve commendations for your deeds." Leary paused and scratched his ear. "Unfortunately, our sincere gratitude is all that we can give at the moment. Perhaps, when the struggle is over, there will be ceremonies and medals. For now," he smiled at the assembled Honey Badgers, "I once again express my thanks for all you have done tonight."

"Jerkops!" Al addressed the squad loudly. "Attention!"

Kevin raised his hand to his brow in salute. Around him, his squadmates mirrored his action. Kuri was not present, since her arm was currently being treated and stitched up in the medical quarters.

"At ease!" The Legend quickly shook Leary's hand and beckoned to Steve as the PVCC administrator and his retinue turned and walked back toward their transport with the Sonee in tow. "Steve, I've spoken with Walsh. She's granted me clearance for two days off at the most. I'm going to need to go over new hunting routes with you and Zoey tomorrow and…"

"Excuse me, Al," Jexis spoke up suddenly. "Maybe it's just me, but after tonight, I've got this feeling like I'm just gonna break something unless we get to kill some more ferals soon. All that whining kind of…broke my soul."

"Yeah, same here," said Amanda. "Could use some more practice with my Baby Boomers, anyway."

"Give me a day to rest up and I'll be good." Nick patted his rifle and smiled.

"Serge take tiny shock-pig hunting days off, no problem," commented Serge.

"I'm in," said Matt.

"Same," added Kevin. "Allie?"

Allie grinned. "Trogdor's always hungry."

Steve and Zoey looked at each other, then to Al, then back to their Jerkops.

"Right. We'll let you know if something comes up," said Steve. "Dismissed."


	10. Chapter 7: Infested Developments

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 7: Infested Developments**

**April 28, 2004, CWCville slums, Slumberland cafeteria**

"Guys, tell me the truth," choked Kevin through a mouthful of sticky, gummy food. "Where do they get this oatmeal? Does anyone even know what brand it is?"

"Probably better not to think too hard about it," Jexis answered, and devoured the rest of her toast. "Cold cereal tastes better, anyway. I don't even know why you try to eat that stuff."

Kevin ignored her and added more sugar to his bowl. The food in the Slumberland cafeteria wasn't _bad_ per se, and the Jerkops were certainly allowed a wider variety than the residents of a Soup Hotel, but something about all of it reminded him of a high school cafeteria. Maybe it was the presence of so many canned, processed, and snack-type foods. In any case, breakfast with his squadmates was at least better than being out on patrol like Steve, Serge, Allie, and Sugar were.

"Are Nick and Kuri still using those dummy targets on Sugar?" asked Amanda from further down the table.

Jexis nodded. "Yeah. We're running out of actual live bait though, what with Rift and all. Sugar won't mind – she takes down about four or five chus on a good night, anyway."

"Speaking of which, what did you end up deciding about the ferals?" Matt spoke up. "I mean, you're the genius med student, right? You must've been studying Bio in high school."

Jexis swallowed a forkful of scrambled eggs and wiped her mouth. "Ferals are definitely non-sentient creatures. Homebreds…I'm not so sure about. They definitely have higher learning capacity…not much, though…and can remember certain simple words, similar to human babies. It's more a question of…"

"Are we seriously tryin' to psychoanalyze the chus?" snorted Amanda. "Give it up, Cadet, we're just gonna kill 'em all anyway. No point wastin' your time with dead meat."

"…it's more a question of how mature and intellectually open a larval chu is," continued the teenage Jerkop, ignoring her squadmate's remark, "the levels of which, so far, are pathetically low on average. I've never had the chance to examine a homebred…_yet_, but it's safe to estimate their thought processes are more based on skills like language and creativity…again, not much…while the ferals are definitely more primordial in nature; hence the greater survival instinct, better sense of self-preservation, oh yeah, and the whole 'eating people' thing…"

"Jesus, Jexis," Matt muttered. A bitter frown replaced his interested smile. It had been more than a month since Jake's death, but the squad still didn't like to talk about it too much.

"Sorry," Jexis quickly apologized. "Well, they still qualify as an invasive species to the Kanto…I mean, _Virginia_ biosphere, but with all the Feeding Day stuff going on, it'll be a while before they either run out of food and starve to death, or start eating each other…or us…out of desperation."

"Wish I had a flamethrower like Allie's got with Trogdor," mused Amanda. "Blowin' em to bits is fun an' all, but that thing just kicks so much ass it's not even funny."

"What exactly is Al doing to it?" Kevin asked. Just two nights earlier, the Legend had appeared and borrowed Trogdor, presumably to give it a few much-needed enhancements for greater range or a wider arc of fire. If the Honey Badgers' squad commander showing up in their barracks was a rarity, him actually asking to tinker with some of their gear was comparable to lottery odds. He was somewhat of a mechanical genius – after all, it had been Al who converted a broken-down school bus into the yellow-painted death wagon known as the Battle Bus.

Amanda shrugged. "Hell if I know. Ask her when Al gives it back." She turned around and waved as she noticed Zoey approaching the table. "Hey, what up, Zo?"

"Everyone, barracks, now." Zoey's face seemed to have turned to stone, and her eyes shone with uncertainty. "Admins just declared a full lockdown. We're going on high alert in a few se-"

An ominous air-raid siren blasted out across the cafeteria through Slumberland's PA system, followed by Vivian Gee's recorded voice.

"_Attention. Attention. Please remain calm. This facility is now under high alert. All combat personnel will report immediately to their respective barracks to await further orders. Attention. Attention. Please remain calm. This facility is now un…"_

"What happened?" asked Matt anxiously as the cafeteria's occupants rose and headed for the nearest exits. "Zoey, did something happen to Steve and Allie and the others?"

Zoey shook her head. "No, it's not them. Let's go, Al's going to brief you himself."

Kevin stood up and followed the others through the crowded halls of Slumberland, back to the Honey Badger barracks. The Legend, Kuri, and Nick were already waiting for them.

"Is that everyone?" Al asked Zoey once Amanda and Matt had taken their seats on the sofa. "Okay, I'm just going to cut right to the stuff you all need to know. First off: Steve's squad is still out on patrol, and as far as I know, they're okay. I've just called in, and they're going to finish their sweep and regroup back here in about an hour."

Kevin let out a quiet sigh of relief, as did Matt and Jexis.

"Second," continued the Legend, "the reason we're on alert is because the administration just got an emergency call from a Wilderness squad on patrol in the abandoned zone. There's been a massive surge in EHPF activity all across the area, and in parts of the slums as well. That's where all the sirens have been coming from these last few days. We think it's in response to Rift, but what we know for a fact is that the entire abandoned zone's been put under quarantine. The slums are still free, but we're seeing a lot more of Chandler's private army walking the streets now." He stepped over to the card table and shuffled through a few sheets of paper. "We're talking merc shock troops, dozens of Sonichus, Angelica overwatch, armored trucks…"

"Holy _shit_," muttered Amanda.

"That's right." Al adjusted his welder's mask. "Not to mention construction workers, technicians, heavy equipment, bulldozers and backhoes…in short, something really important is going down across the inner city, and I'd bet a keg of Crown Royal that it's got something to do with all the larvae we've been killing. So unless I'm mistaken, Walsh is sending us in to infiltrate the blockade and find out what's happening. And if we happen to kill a few dozen Sonees or Roseys along the way, well, I'm sure the administration won't mind."

Zoey nodded and pointed to each of her squadmates in turn. "Right, you heard the man. I want everyone here suited up and ready to deploy immediately. Jexis, get your kit together. Matt, warm up the bus and make sure she's got enough spare ammo loaded in the back. Kuri…sharpen _everything_ you've got. Amanda, don't even _think_ about skimping on the C4. Nick, Kevin, you two load up for heavy support. Al, I need to go over those maps with you again…"

"Heavy support?" Kevin spluttered, caught off guard by the Jerkop's order. "Hang on a sec, I…"

"It's not that hard, man," Nick reassured him with a knowing grin. "You ever play with Super Soakers when you were a kid? Just like that, except you got to hold these ones a little tighter. Come on,_ compadre_. Let's go get you a real man's weapon."

"_Slumberland. Slumberland, Honey Badger Lead, come back, over."_

Al unhooked the walkie-talkie from his belt as the other Jerkops hurriedly crowded around him, all eager to hear what their squad leader had to say. "Steve, it's Al. Go ahead, over."

"_Hey Al. Listen, we're still in the slum districts, but something's going on over at one of the Soup Hotels…I think it's the one Kacey staked out a while back. We're holed up in a building across the street, we've got multiple confirmed EHPF units on site, and…you're not gonna believe this…ferals. They're bringing whole truckloads of ferals right into the hotel. Over."_

"What? Have you confirmed this? Over."

"_Affirmative, Allie scoped it out. Hang on…say that again. Okay, she's got the radio and she says Chandler just issued an announcement that he's moving the ferals into the Soup Hotels across the slum districts. Looks like they've found another way to keep the little bastards out of our hands. It's turning into a riot down here. Relay that to the admins – I think Walsh is gonna want to hear this. Over."_

"_Don't bother with that, Ledger,"_ Bryan Bash's voice sounded from the walkie-talkie. _"Morrison, I just logged your call, and I'm rerouting it right to the administration. Have your squad maintain overwatch for now. I'll patch you through so you can give us updates. Over."_

"_Copy and confirm. Out."_

**Twenty-five minutes later, CWCville slums**

To all passing cars and pedestrians on the streets and sidewalks of CWCville, the Battle Bus appeared to be nothing more than a relic – a clunky, chunky mess of steel and rubber that had been bolted and welded together into the poorest imitation of a proper vehicle. While it was mainly suited for combat extractions and direct confrontations with chus and loyalist forces, Al had designed it to go incognito as necessary, a process which involved removing and stowing its spiked front bumper and a few of the heavier armor plates.

The bus still looked like a clunker, but at least it wasn't as conspicuous as the 45-foot-long yellow tank that formed its alternate identity. Now Matt was weaving it through the streets of CWCville, carrying his precious cargo of Jerkops all the way to Soup Hotel #4.

_Soup Hotel #4._ Kevin still couldn't believe he was actually going back so soon, and in broad daylight, no less. In the back of his mind, he hoped all his old friends were still okay. Just the idea of ferals being put in close proximity with so many homeless men and women was simply terrifying. Frank and Carl probably wouldn't last five minutes without trying to kill one, and what would the EHPF guards do when they saw a couple of hobos murdering their spawn?

When Al returned from the commanders' meeting with new orders for the squad, his tidings hadn't exactly been of comfort and joy. After piecing together surveillance reports and going over the past week or so of feral concentration sightings, as well as live updates from Steve's squad, Walsh and her other administrators had determined that this Sonee and Rosey relocation process had been going on for some time now…perhaps even as soon as two weeks after the start of Operation Rift. At first glance, Chandler's goal seemed like a smart one, if a bit incendiary. By moving immense quantities of ferals into the Soup Hotels, he was not only decreasing the number of sewer-dwellers, but also providing them with all the food they could eat, thus weaning them off of their hunter-scavenger nature.

The downside of all this was that Chandler obviously had no clue about just how much the little creatures could actually eat. At the rate that the ferals were being introduced to the Soup Hotels, the tenants would run out of food within a week…and that was the most positive estimate Vivian Gee could come up with.

"You feeling all right?" Jexis asked concernedly. "You're a bit pale. Drink some water."

"Nah, it's just…I didn't think I'd ever be going back there." Kevin toyed with his new AK-47's iron sights. "And I don't think I'll be able to do that much damage with this thing. I mean, I've never even fired one before."

"Hey, don't worry," the medic reassured him. "You'll do fine. Anyway, you said the same thing about pistols, and look how that turned out!"

Kevin had to agree with her there. An additional two weeks of practice had vastly improved his accuracy with handguns and other small arms. The AK, though…that was a whole new ballgame. He was still counting on the more experienced Jerkops like Steve, Zoey, Nick, and Serge to do most of the shooting. Even the Legend himself was coming along for the operation – that in itself was indicative of just how serious the Miscreants were taking this new development.

"Steve said there were mercs inside," he continued. "As in, the people Chandler hired specifically to kill us."

Zoey turned to face him. "Don't worry. Amanda's got you covered. Just walk right in there, scope out the cafeteria, and tell us when to start shooting. How's the wire feeling?"

"Uncomfortable." Kevin toyed with the microphone clipped to his shirt. "What if I get spotted?"

"Don't," said Zoey bluntly.

_Well, that's comforting,_ thought Kevin as the bus eased into a lane behind a large delivery truck with the words **CWCuisine CWCatering** painted on the sides and back in messy yellow and blue letters. Probably another delivery to one of Chandler's chu-friendly hotels or something along those lines.

Though he didn't know it yet, both of the vehicles were heading to the exact same location, and not a single one of their occupants wanted to be there in the slightest.

**CWCville slums, near Soup Hotel #4**

_We should NOT have brought Sugar,_ thought Allie to herself as the honey badger snarled and clawed at the floor behind her. Steve had used the "safety on" command, but the stench of thousands of baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon was having some sort of super-addictive effect on Sugarplum Fury's heightened senses. Frothing at the mouth, she dropped flat to the floor and rolled over and over, looking desperately up at her as if to say _Please, PLEASE just let me go and start ripping the little bastards apart._

"I'm sorry, honey," Allie said gently, but made no attempt to pet her or do anything that might result in "friendly fire" from the ferocious striped mammal. "You're gonna have to wait, like us. We can't just barge in there, you know."

"Grrrrrowr."

"Exactly." The Jerkop raised her monocular and took another look at the entrance to the Soup Hotel. The armored EHPF trucks were continuing their cycle of feral transport that had apparently been going on for about a week now. Every few minutes, another vehicle would pull up into the rear delivery station and back right up. Workers in riot gear and uniformed Sonichus got out, entered the building, and left ten minutes later once their cargo had been unloaded. The Honey Badgers had only realized that they were delivering live ferals because of one curious Rosey who'd wandered out of the building, cooing and batting her eyelashes at one of the EHPF officers. Well, that and the constant "goo-goo"-ing coming from inside the trucks.

Allie gritted her teeth. She hoped Al was coming, and she _really _hoped he was bringing Trogdor back. Without her flamethrower and faced with so many little chus that could use a good burninating, she felt utterly naked and vulnerable. At least Steve had his P90, Serge had Baba Yaga - his custom RPD - and they all had Sugar, who was now approaching berserker mode with every passing second. But all _she_ had was a lousy 9mm pistol and her combat knife.

"How did Kevin even kill that Sparky?" she wondered aloud to the honey badger. That hadn't been a situation like Steve constantly got himself into, and _he_ had a full-size kukri to take down chus and loyalists up close. Along came the "new guy," and even he'd managed to turn a zappin' and dangerous EHPF Sonichu into ashes using _only_ his hunting knife. That in itself was pretty impressive for someone who had only been in the PVCC for a good two weeks back then. Now, more than a month since his arrival, Kevin was adapting quickly to the Jerkop way of life. What was more, he'd also stepped right up to fill Jake's spot in their small group of Shopping Center veterans, and Allie didn't mind that at all. Of course, she would have loved it if they were all together again, but…

Allie tore herself away from her thoughts and focused instead on trying to calm Sugar down without getting in range of those sharp claws or teeth. Maybe it hadn't been such a good idea for Steve to leave the two of them alone while he and Serge went to salvage a few items for her infiltration. That was the plan – send a few disguised Honey Badgers into the Soup Hotel to scout it out prior to the subsequent purging of all ferals within. And since she'd lived the homeless life for so many years, Allie sat right at the top of Steve's list in terms of eligibility. Lucky lucky.

A muffled rumbling resounded through the small building, and Allie heard a familiar hiss of exhaust cut sharply through the air. _Good. They're here._ She leapt up and headed for the stairs down to the ground floor, beckoning to the honey badger as she went. "Sugar, come."

Sugarplum Fury snarled and bared her teeth. She wasn't accustomed to taking orders from anyone but Al, Steve, or maybe Zoey. Allie eventually had to resort to waving a piece of dried Rosey jerky in the air to get Sugar's attention. Step by step, she lured the honey badger downstairs and out the back door where Steve and Serge were just greeting Zoey and her squad. Allie was slightly shocked when Al appeared, but then again, this operation wasn't exactly one they had planned out in meticulous detail. If the Legend was good at one thing, it was devising incredibly creative and on-the-spot plans, and then killing huge loads of Sonees and Roseys.

In other words, _exactly_ what they were going to do today.

Kevin stepped out of the Battle Bus ahead of Matt just as he noticed Allie and Sugar walking over to join the assembled Honey Badgers. It was pretty exciting for him – finally, after all this time, every single member of their squad was coming together to carry out their mission. _This_ was the kind of thing he'd been expecting when he'd joined the PVCC.

"You okay?" asked Zoey as she gave Steve a quick hug and a pat on the back. "No one spotted you on the way back, right?"

The squad leader shook his head. "Nope. Even Serge can be pretty stealthy if you say please."

"Is common courtesy," grunted the Russian. "Say magic word, and Serge make magic."

"Okay." Al stepped forward and held out a sketched map of the Soup Hotel's entrance and ground floor to Steve. "Zoey and I drew this up with input from Kevin – he's our candidate for the infiltration."

Kevin could have sworn he saw Allie pump her fist in a _yes_ gesture out of the corner of his eye.

"We've got the White Medallions coming in for backup soon. ETA unknown." The Legend frowned. "That's the way Walsh wants it. Two squads to a Soup Hotel. Picklemen and Cashiers, Tomgirls and Red Devils, Spikes of Blue and ALBinos, etc, etc. The word's been going out all across the network ever since Steve made that call. It's not just operatives from Slumberland either, every Soup Hotel in the city's getting hit today."

"This is big, guys." Zoey's voice had taken on its customary "dead serious" tone. "This is really, _really_ big. I mean 'cripple the city's feral population forever' big. We pull this off, and it'll be the worst thing to happen to Chandler since Walsh took down his Attraction Sign and we sabotaged the Sweetheart operation."

"So let's not waste any time," said Steve. "Matt, I want you and Al to start prepping the bus for a double-squad insertion. That's the 'one-two punch' we were talking about a few days back. You brought what I asked for, right?"

"Yeah, I'm going to need about fifteen minutes to get it all fitted, and that's _with_ Al's help."

Steve nodded at the driver and pointed to Allie and Kevin. "Good. Practice your hobo-speak, you two. You're about to go get some lunch. Try not to kill any ferals, okay?"

Grinning, Serge held out two stinking, patchy coats and frayed hats to the Jerkops. "Is good disguise. Serge took from tiny cowards in alley."

Kevin gulped and accepted the clothes, then handed over his AK and PVCC jacket, shoulder strap, and badge. Homeless CWCitizens didn't usually carry assault rifles, and the last thing he wanted was to be recognized as a Jerkop.

Well, if he was going to be stepping right into the heart of the swarm, at least he wouldn't be doing it alone.

**Ten minutes later, Soup Hotel #4 reception desk**

"Mr. Shaw. Long time," droned Harriet, the middle-aged, stocky receptionist who handled most of the registration details for Soup Hotel #4. "Next time, let someone know before you decide to disappear again. I'm going to have to re-register you – we gave your room to another tenant when we didn't hear back from you for three days."

"That's okay. I'm not going to stay very long anyway," Kevin replied somewhat truthfully as he and Allie stepped up to the front of the queue. "Just put us down for a double room. One night."

"Mazel tov." Harriet narrowed her eyes at Allie. "And you are…"

"Cassandra," the Jerkop replied tersely as she scratched her hair beneath the dirty wool hat Serge had given her. It was customary for operatives to make up false identities for themselves using a combination of names from their administrators and other important PVCC figures. "Cassandra MAYS. Cassie for short."

"Welcome to Soup Hotel #4," said the receptionist in an incredibly bored voice that held no welcoming tone whatsoever. Thankfully, she hadn't picked up on Allie's subtle emphasis on MAYS. The woman's hearing, as Kevin remembered from his hobo days, had never been good.

"So, how's everything been since I left?" asked Kevin. "And which room did we get?"

Harriet frowned and faked a severe coughing fit, leaning in close so that only Kevin could hear her. _"Get out of here, Shaw,"_ she hissed in his ear. _"The whole place went to hell while you were gone. You'll see."_ She straightened up and put on her most uninterested smile for the security cameras. "Unfortunately for you, you'll both have to wait. All the rooms are taken or…_occupied_." Harriet shuddered." Someone will call you if a room opens up."

"That sounds great! Thanks!" Allie grabbed Kevin's hand and pulled him out of the line before the tall and brutish hobo behind them could "persuade" the disguised Jerkops to hurry up.

"Good job," said Kevin under his breath once they were safely out of the way and heading for the cafeteria. He glanced down at his hand. "You can let go now if you want."

Allie shook her head. "Nope. They think we're here for a one-night stand, so we'll just have to keep up the act until the bullets start flying. Until then, think of it like a date. But keep your eyes open." Her voice dropped to almost a whisper. "Mercs."

Kevin straightened up and drew his hat down over his face, pretending to be adjusting the wide brim. Chandler may have been too inept to make any sort of effective security force out of anything other than his EHPF Sonichus, but these loyalist mercenaries were something completely different. They were _much_ more dangerous than any chu (save the Chaotic Combo, the original Sonichu, and several others), partially due to the fact that they were just regular, normal humans who, for some reason, had decided to fight for Chandler's cause. No one, not even Mary Lee Walsh, knew where they'd come from, or who exactly was commanding them.

And right now, a group of three was marching down the hall right toward Kevin and Allie.

"_You draw Feeding Day duty tonight?"_ one of the masked soldiers growled, his voice distorted by his air filter.

"_Yeah. That bastard Winters set me up again. Not looking forward to the next round. Those sewers give me the creeps."_

"_Stay out of the cafeteria, then,"_ advised the third mercenary in a thick Southern accent. _"They ain't paying us enough to be fuckin' babysitters for a bunch of retarded fuzzbags."_

"_Whatever. Not our problem, right?"_

"_Goddamn right, good buddy."_

Kevin and Allie hastened past until they were well out of range, then continued on, hand-in-hand, toward the cafeteria. A large crowd of homeless men and women was slowly making their way toward the dreaded room, some with wooden boards, makeshift clubs, and other blunt objects grasped tightly in their hands. Kevin noticed that every single one of them looked like he or she would rather be anywhere else in the world at the moment.

"That was close," he muttered to Allie.

"Well, the outfits worked. At least that's worth something."

"Yeah." Kevin was suddenly no longer concerned with the mercs, Allie, or even the mission. A frightening sound was coming from inside the cafeteria – the sound of a feral swarm around the size of the one that had nearly killed him, Zoey, and Jexis that one night. As they reached the wide double doors, he and Allie pushed their way through a loosely packed crowd of hobos and into the cafeteria, unsure of what exactly they had gotten themselves into. Neither one of the Jerkops was particularly eager to find out, yet they carried on weaving through the grumbling crowd until at last they reached…

"Gaa-gaa! YAY!"

"Wosey! Goo-goo!"

"Hee-hee! Sonee! Nee!"

Kevin nearly suffered a heart attack from the shock of what lay before him. This was not the Soup Hotel #4 cafeteria he remembered, with its long line of hungry hobos, an extensive soup counter, and volunteer servers. This…_this_ was madness in its purest form.

Past the edge of the crowd, the large cafeteria now bore host to nearly three _hundred_ chu larvae, all of whom were scampering and waddling around the room with not a care in the world or any sense of direction whatsoever. The unfortunate souls who somehow managed to make their way through the crowd of pink and yellow blobs were now clustered together for protection around a scattering of tables, desperately trying to just eat their meager lunches and ignore the dozens of Sonees and Roseys attempting to climb them, steal their food, or just hug their legs for no reason at all. Every few seconds, a Rosey would climb to the top of a table, clumsily shimmy her way up onto some poor hobo's head, and parachute down to the floor with a cheerfully despicable "YAY!" Kevin wondered why the diners just didn't snap and start kicking the baby hedgehogs away, until he noticed nearly two dozen EHPF officers keeping watch throughout the room.

So this was the life of a CWCville hobo. No more rights, no more peace, not even a shred of pity from their "wonderful and generous mayor." Now the status of master race had been adjusted to place even the ferals above the city's homeless. Chandler could have put them literally anywhere else – a park, a warehouse, anywhere far away from human intervention. But no. To him, they were precious little babies, innocent and adorable and worthy of only the best large-scale housing he could provide for all of them. So he'd dumped them all here and posted a few guards to make sure they received the special treatment he felt they deserved. That was it. No more problems, and of course, his citizens would understand the necessity of this relocation! He was their Mayor, after all, and whatever he said was the way things were. If they didn't like it, well, there were still plenty of ferals crowding the abandoned zone sewers who needed fresh meat.

But while Chandler had most likely already forgotten there even _was_ a problem and was now busying himself witheither his extensive video game collection or his propaganda comic _Sonichu_, the hobos of CWCville were still starving and going mad by the truckloads…while actual truckloads of ferals continued to clog the Soup Hotels.

The commotion was incredible. Truly, Kevin had never heard such a racket in his life, and _he'd_ faced down a mob of _thousands_. These chus were definitely much more adapted to the homebred style of life, and even though they couldn't yet talk in the disgusting twee words that Al said homebreds learned to speak, the adapted ferals were doing their best to make lunch an absolute hell for the hobos. Conversations between diners were now either impossible or had to be shouted at the top on one's lungs or spoken in close proximity to get any sort of message across.

And the food…_good God, no wonder they all look so miserable_¸ thought Kevin as his eyes drifted toward the vast buffet tables. They looked like scenes from a National Geographic special in Africa, where a zebra or buffalo carcass was literally swarming with vultures. The tables and trays themselves were almost invisible – blocked from view by a living blanket of Sonees and Roseys. There was no telling what sort of sinfully excessive gluttony was being enacted upon the food below. The few hobos brave enough to actually attempt retrieving a meal either went away empty-handed or else escaped with inedible, half-chewed, soiled mush.

Half of Kevin wanted to take Allie and flee the building as quickly as possible, but the other half still remembered that staying there was the entire point of their recon mission. Outside, they may have been battle-hardened Jerkops, but in Soup Hotel #4, they were Kevin Shaw and Cassie MAYS, and it was lunchtime.

Kevin swallowed in revulsion and stepped out, pulling an extremely reluctant Allie along by her hand. He'd almost reached the end of the crowd when a large hairy hand grabbed his shoulder.

"Where d'ya think yer goin', boy?" snarled a scruffy, hefty hobo with about three teeth in total. "Ya wanna get yerself an' yer pussy there zapped ta kingdom come?"

"Excuse me?" Allie shot the man a heated glare. She looked like she would like nothing better than to pull out his remaining teeth with her bare hands and stuff a live feral down his throat.

"We just want some lunch," Kevin replied quickly before an argument could break out. "Are you saying they won't even let you get food?"

The man shook his head. "Whaddaya think? They're Sparkies. Oh, we kin _try_ an' get food, but good luck gettin' through the swarm with a full plate. Once those damn babies eat their fill, we kin take what's left. An' they're _never_ full. Ain't you two never been to a Soup 'otel before?"

"Not like this," muttered the Jerkop. "Can't we at least sit down without getting zapped?"

"Bah! Be my guest," growled the big hobo, and gestured to the crowd of ferals. "Tell 'em I said go fuck 'emselves, every las' one of 'em."

"Right. We will." Kevin glanced around to check that none of the EHPF officers were anywhere within earshot. "Two questions. One, does a guy named Frank Douglas still live here?"

"Ol' Frank? Yeah, I seen 'im a coupla times." The man scratched his scraggly beard and picked out some debris. "Keeps to 'is room now. Barricaded 'imself in 'gainst the rats. Ya know 'im?"

"You could say that. Two, how fast and how quietly do you think you can get the news out that we're about to turn this entire building into a war zone?"

"War zone? Kid, what're ya sayin'?"

"Listen," Allie piped up. "We're with the PVCC. They're coming in to wipe out all the ferals and kill every loyalist and chu in this place. We need you to spread the word and tell everyone to get out as fast as they can. Tell them to head for any shelter they can find, anywhere but here. Don't run and don't panic…at least not until the shooting starts. Think you can do that?"

The hobo gaped. Kevin could almost see the little indentations where most of his teeth had once sprouted from his gum line. Finally, he took a deep breath and stared directly at the two Jerkops.

"Word tends ta travel fast inna Soup 'otel, ya know," he whispered. "I oughta call ya crazy, but if it's either yer lil' plan or _them_," he shot a deathly stare at the nearest Sonichu, "crazy sounds jus' fine ta me. Gimme some time an' I'll see what I kin do."

"Be sure and tell Frank that Kevin Shaw's looking for him," added Kevin as the man trudged off into the crowd. He turned back to Allie. "Think that'll work?"

"If he gets the word out, that should definitely cut down the collateral damage," replied Allie. She spotted a table near the end of the cafeteria, away from the largest concentration of chu larvae. "Come on, let's sit over here. It'll give him some more time to tell everyone."

The two Jerkops sat down at the table side by side, close enough so that talking wasn't exactly a chore and could be delivered at normal volume. Allie ran a quick sweep around the room with her eyes, then relaxed when she was sure the uniformed Sonichus weren't paying any attention.

"So...what do you want to talk about?" she asked quietly.

Kevin was at a loss for words. "I don't know."

"Well, there must be _something_. Oh! Did you see what Al did to Trogdor?"

"No, I think he loaded it into the cargo hold before we left."

"Damn." Allie's expression was somewhere between frustration and amusement, like a kid fruitlessly begging their parents to reveal what was inside the biggest Christmas presents. "Not even a glimpse?"

"Sorry. Whatever he did, I think you'll find out soon enough." Kevin let out a hesitant laugh. It was all he could muster, given the fact that he could feel a group of ferals stumbling over his boots. "Uh, let me think…tell me about what happened when you left the Burger King."

"Yeah, I don't think I ever told you that bit," said Allie, and twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "Well, I remember being scared…_really_ scared. Without mall cops, there were so many break-ins, every single day. I didn't think they'd rob a Burger King, but I guess it was just the whole atmosphere that turned me off." She sighed. "I kind of remember writing something about that in that note I left when you were in the hospital. You don't still have that old thing, do you?"

"Are you kidding?" Kevin smiled. He'd been waiting for her to ask that for a while now. "I kept that note for a few months before it fell apart. Rain, you know. If it helps, it was probably the best thing anyone did for me while I was recovering."

"Aww, stop it." Allie's voice was playful, but sincere. "Sorry Kevin, but notes do _not_ top cheeseburgers and pickle pranks."

"Mitch…oh man, I forgot about that old bastard! Where do you think he…do you think he still works at the Shopping Center?"

Allie shrugged. "Gotta pay the bills, right? Wish we could get hold of him…he'd be a _great_ spy for Walsh. I mean, she's already got two agents filling the roles of Chandler's 'gal-pals', so why not the guy who cleans up after…oh hell, I don't even want to _think _about that." She shuddered. "Next topic. I…hey, I just remembered something else. Didn't I say something about going out for dinner to celebrate when you got better?"

"Oh yeah." Kevin's memory was fuzzy at best, but _that_ much he'd remembered. "I was thinking about going to…some Thai place, maybe? I don't know, that was a long ti-"

"Really? You were seriously thinking about a Thai restaurant?" A huge smile spread across Allie's face. "You are un-fucking-believable, you know that? I _love_ Thai!"

Kevin had known that little detail about Allie for a while now. He hadn't _completely_ forgotten Mitch and his not-so-subtle hints, after all. "You think they'll let us…"

"No." The Jerkop shook her head. "_Way_ too risky. We sometimes go out to eat as a whole squad, but not too often, and _never_ just two of us. Once this whole uprising dies down, _then_ let's talk about dinner dates. Sound good?"

"Okay, I can't take this any longer." Kevin looked reluctantly at the buffet tables. "I need to see just how bad this really is."

"Then you're not going alone," insisted Allie.

Kevin nearly wept when he saw what the hobos had to deal with in terms of food access in the post-relocation days. Sonees and Roseys clogged every channel and aisle between the tables, filling up whatever free space they could with their plump fuzzy dirty bodies. A Sonee brushed against his leg as it waddled squealing after a group of other ferals, leaving a thick streak of grime, clam chowder, and other undesirable waste on his pants. Higher up, a Rosey shuffled up to the edge of the table and waved its armstubs at him in irritation, begging for a ride. Kevin merely pushed it away with a grimace and continued on towards the food. It took nearly all of his willpower to keep from "accidentally" stomping on or kicking any of the little chus as they passed, but at long last, they reached the first table.

"Sonee!" shrieked a fat yellow feral as the Jerkops approached, and immediately tripped into a cauldron of tomato soup. For a moment, Kevin hoped it would drown or burn to death, but then two black-tipped ears emerged from the steaming pot. Millimeter by millimeter, the soup's level began falling as the Sonee sucked in vast mouthfuls from beneath the surface. Allie managed to nab a wrapped cracker before a Rosey could rip it open with its tiny teeth and gulp it down like so many others it had gobbled its way through. Tearing open the packaging, she stuffed one into her mouth and handed the other to Kevin, who accepted and devoured the saltine gratefully.

Further along the line, a scraggly-looking homeless woman and her teenage son watched the kitchen doors like hawks, poised to spring into action at the slightest hint of a new food delivery. Two men desperately battled the horde for slices of hot pizza, but they could only get away with nibbled fingers or filthy pieces of crust. The only thing that went relatively untouched was (naturally) the salad bar, and now even the most desperately hungry of hobos wouldn't go anywhere _near_ that. The ferals had quickly staked it out as soon as it arrived and were now using the trays of lettuce, tomatoes, onions and other healthy salad ingredients for communal toilets. It was unbelievable just how much destruction the chus were causing, especially given their size.

"Wosey! Goo-gaa!"

Allie snarled as a mustard-covered Rosey leapt from the top of a sneeze guard and tried to parachute onto her face. Remembering the EHPF guards, she simply sidestepped and let the chu float to the ground, where it promptly hugged her leg and began rubbing its filthy yellow-smeared face all over the Jerkop's cargo pants.

"I'm beginning to regret following you," Allie said through clenched teeth, and gently shoved the Rosey away. Kevin didn't respond. Most of the possibly-edible food was either devoured or befouled by now, so the best chance they had to get any more food was to wait for the next…"

_Creak!_

"YAY!" shouted the feral horde, and immediately rushed to blockade the kitchen doors just as a worried-looking female server stepped out, bearing a fresh tray of macaroni and cheese with a topping of breadcrumbs. The middle-aged woman screamed and tried to weave her way through the ferals with her heavy boots, but in seconds was set upon by nearly a dozen Sonees and Roseys who fastened onto her like hideous furry leeches, crying "goo-goo" and batting her legs frenziedly with their armstubs. It was a miracle she managed to even take another step forward.

Kevin wanted to just start punching chus left and right. He was certain that even if he and Allie offered to help the poor worker, the Sonichu guards would find some excuse to punish or detain them…maybe "preventing the babies from receiving their lunch."

_No. The hell with that. The hell with EHPF. These little bastards just ruined their last meal,_ he thought furiously as he imagined the Honey Badgers storming in, him with his brand new AK-47 and Allie with her new and improved Trogdor the Burninator. Kevin could almost picture all of the Sonees and Roseys on fire, riddled with bullets, tortured and maimed, ripped to pieces, eaten by Sugar, stabbed, eviscerated, mutilated, castrated, dismembered…

The woman screamed something unintelligible, interrupting his thoughts and tried to swat a Sonee off of the giant tray. Having no fingers, it couldn't grab hold of the side and therefore fell straight onto a pack of its fellow ferals with a terrified cry of "GOO-GEEEEE!" Kevin savored the half second of blessed relief from the loathsome cooing and squealing, then eased his way slowly and carefully through the sea of fuzzy bodies towards the serving lady. Allie saw what he was doing and followed suit, sweeping entire groups of Sonees and Roseys aside with her feet.

"YAY!"

Before the Jerkops could even get within ten feet of the struggling worker to help carry the tray, a fat little Rosey leapt from atop a refrigerator packed to the brim with squirming, thirsty ferals and chewed bottles of CWC Cola. Her parachute-skirt flapped out beneath her as she floated through the air, taking her straight toward the woman's unprotected head. Unlike Allie, her hands were full, and she was carrying an _incredibly_ heavy load. The airborne chu smacked her full in the face and immediately hugged her, enveloping it in a stinking ball of pink fur and filth.

"Goo-gaa! Wosey!"

"MMMMPPHH!" shrieked the worker through her disgusting new mask, and immediately lost her balance, toppling backward as she dropped her heavy cargo right onto a whole group of Sonees and Roseys. And this was an entire buffet-sized tray of very dense, cheesy macaroni. The babies in harm's way weren't just crippled or badly shaken…they were annihilated.

_CRUNCH! SQUISH! POP! CRUNCH! SPLAT!_

"Fuck. Do it. _Do it!_" Kevin hissed to Allie, who immediately began pressing the emergency call button on her hidden microphone as fast as she could. Looking past the swarming mob, he could see the ferals waddling away from the dropped, blood-spattered tray in fear, crying their eyes out and making hideous "WAAAAAAHHHH!" noises, the kind that only a person who had never heard a real human baby before might have thought that babies made all the time. Beneath the tray, a thick red pool was spreading out across the cafeteria floor, punctuated by scraps of fur and slippery internal organs. The upper half of a Sonee had been smashed completely off of its waist, and now its lower body lay twitching in rigor mortis, kicking its sneakered stumpfeet wildly in the air. The fat Rosey, the one who had attacked the server, merely climbed onto the dead Sonee's lower half and plopped herself over the edge of the macaroni tray without even a hint of sympathy for her dead comrade. Squealing in delight, she began shoving whole armstub-loads of pasta into her cavernous, flabby little mouth. The mob noticed this, and with a mass cry of "YAY!" they followed the Rosey with glee. Soon, Sonees and Roseys packed the tray, wolfing down huge quantities of cheesy noodles as if they were living breathing fuzzy vacuum cleaners.

"Get off me! GET OFF ME!"

Kevin saw the server struggling to her feet, trying to shake off a load of babies that were still clinging to her and crying for food. Even after demolishing enough macaroni to feed forty hobos, the swarm still wasn't satisfied. Yet the ferals never attacked her like they'd attacked Jake. Maybe a few weeks of being spoiled so much had ruined their killer instinct. In any case, it would make them a whole lot easier to kill now.

"What the heavy metal rock band? Hey, look at that! Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!"

_Oh, shit._ Kevin would recognize that special kind of nasally laugh anywhere. As if the poor woman hadn't already been through enough, now the Sonichus had taken notice of her struggles. A group of three was walking over to laugh at the feral-covered server, completely oblivious to the seven or eight of their illegitimate children she'd just accidentally crushed. The Sonees and Roseys stepped back instinctively to let them through, like a furry Red Sea parting for Moses.

"Hey, y'all get back to eating. Stay straight," ordered another EHPF officer to Kevin, Allie, and the few other hobos at the buffet tables. He turned back to the woman and gave her a huge shit-eatingly smug grin. "Ma'am, these little babies are hungry. Don't you hear them? Our glorious Creator doesn't pay you to stand around lazily while his helpless little grandchildren starve."

"Three C-Quarters an hour!" yelled the server as she ripped a Sonee off her waist and hurled it at the Sonichus. None of them even made an effort to catch it, and it simply hit a table leg and bounced off with a squeal, saved by its own fat. "No! I'm not doing this anymore! I QUIT!"

"Now, you can't do that, ma'am," sneered the officer. "Under Mayor Chandler's new law, all staff in charge of Sonee and Rosey maintenance cannot resign under penalty of severe fines and community service. Either way, you're still going to feed them. Looks like it's back to work for you!" The Sonichu laughed heartlessly, then stopped as soon as they noticed the blood-covered macaroni tray sitting not two feet away. Reality dawned on the chus with frightening speed.

"Hey. _HEY!_" yelled an officer, and began building a charge in his cheekspots. "Stop right there, criminal scum! You're under arrest for infanticide, reckless endangerment, attempting to…"

_CRASH! _The Sonichu died instantly, his skull sparking and shattering like an electrified wineglass as the Battle Bus's front-mounted battering ram attachment smashed right through the side of the cafeteria and dealt him a 35-mile-per-hour blow straight to the side of his spiky head. Kevin and Allie leapt back, narrowly avoiding the massive armored vehicle as it exploded halfway into Soup Hotel #4, then backed up to create an opening for the Honey Badgers and White Medallions. A deafening metallic roar sounded from the cockpit as Serge pushed Baba Yaga's snout through the forward firing slit and began opening up on the two surviving Sonichus from the group, shredding the group to pieces under a withering hail of heavy RPD bullets. Wayward rounds slammed into various Sonees and Roseys and reduced them to bloody corpses, tearing through their soft flesh like knives through papier-mâché.

Al stepped out of the Battle Bus, clad in his welder's mask and a heavy trench coat with a Kevlar vest underneath. Kevin had never seen the Legend in combat before, and Matt often said that Al always preferred to use something strange and unexpected every time he was called into action. Kevin at first wondered if he was even armed at all, until a single Sonee waddled up to him and Al disgustedly fired a four inch long rusty nail straight through its eye, launched from some sort of amplified nail gun he'd strapped to his arm. The chu shrieked once, then toppled over in an epileptic brain-dead fit, its armstubs spasming violently.

"GET TO THE BUS!" the Legend roared to his two stunned operatives. Steve leapt out behind him, P90 in hand, followed by Sugarplum Fury and a black-haired woman with a kawaii haircut. If she hadn't been wearing a white-painted Sonichu medallion over her Kevlar armor and carrying a UMP 45, she might have been as cute as Sailor Mercury.

"Like what you see?" asked the blond Jerkop as he flipped up the weapon's iron sights.

"There's plenty here for both our squads, Morrison," laughed Blanca Weiss. "I say we kill 'em all now and let their GodBear sort 'em out."

"Amen to that, Miss Weiss," replied Steve, and opened fire just as Blanca did.

Kevin smiled as he pulled Allie to her feet and dashed toward the Battle Bus. This long-awaited homecoming of his had just taken a turn for the interesting.

Oddly enough, it didn't take very long before the EHPF officers managed to recover from the shock of having an armored school bus burst through the side of the Soup Hotel and start dispensing murderous Jerkops left and right. In seconds, the air came alive with a storm of Thundershocks, Sparks, and other electric attacks as the Sonichus fought back with everything they could muster. Spurred on more by devotion to their creator than some form of natural parental instinct, they battled not only to save themselves, but also to protect the hundreds of screaming Sonees and Roseys who were currently waddling past them in a frenzied fuzzy tide.

Kevin felt the hairs on his arms prickle from static as he dashed recklessly across the cafeteria for the safety of the Battle Bus with Allie hot on his heels. The huge vehicle's steel-plated surface was literally swarming with arcs of lightning, but as long as the disembarking operatives remembered to stay on the thick rubber floor, the Sonichus' attacks wouldn't affect them at all.

"You two okay?" Al shouted as Kevin and Allie reached the bus and crouched beside him and Jexis. Steve and Blanca had formed a base of fire with some of the White Medallions a few yards up, while Serge, Zoey, Kuri, and a few other Honey Badgers were circling around to the right to try and catch the other chus and their horrid offspring in a crossfire. Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin saw Steve take a Thundershock bolt to the chest, but his rubber boots and Kevlar vest fortunately dispersed it into nothing more than a heavy stunning blast. Beside him, Blanca Weiss took over with her UMP 45 until the Honey Badger squad leader could recover.

"We're fine!" yelled Allie over the deafening zaps and gunfire. "You guys got here just in time!"

"Did you warn them?" Jexis asked as she wrenched open the Battle Bus's right ventral storage locker and rummaged around inside, taking care not to brush anything metal. "Hold on a sec, we've got your weapons here!"

"Yeah! Hope we gave them enough time." Kevin glanced back toward the Legend as the medic passed him his AK-47 and started working on retrieving Trogdor the Burninator for Allie. "Al, we saw some merc squads as we came in!"

"Fuck." Al turned around and nailed a fleeing Rosey through the chest twice. "STEVE, WE GOT MERCS!"

"Copy!" Morrison replied shakily. The Thundershock still hadn't fully worn off.

By the time Kevin loaded and set up his assault rifle, the cafeteria had devolved into absolute chaos. The server who had fallen and squished a half dozen ferals was now running for the kitchen, but not before snatching a Sonee and Rosey to spirit away for a little well-deserved culinary torture. Hobos and ferals ran helter-skelter in every direction, the former trying to escape through the newly-formed hole in the wall and the latter attempting to waddle back to the safety of the hallway and the larger, tougher Sonichus. Ironically, the Sonees and Roseys were actually hindering their parents by accident – the sheer tide of fuzzy, stumbling bodies was throwing off the EHPF officers' aim. One by one, gunfire overpowered electricity, and one by one, the Sonichus hit the floor, dead.

Unfortunately for the Jerkops, the real threat emerged a few seconds after the last officer fell.

"_ENEMY CONTACT! LAY DOWN SUPPRESSIVE FIRE, FLANKS AND FORWARD!"_

Blanca and Steve and the White Medallions around them dove for cover as a loyalist mercenary squad forcefully shoved their way through the crowd of panicked hobos and quickly knocked over half a dozen tables for improvised cover. In seconds, they'd formed an overwhelming firing line, and immediately began unloading on the Jerkops with an arsenal of heavily-customized MP5, M4, and SCAR-H assault rifles. Zoey and her team somehow managed to find shelter behind a fallen buffet table only seconds before the barrage would have torn them all to pieces.

"You got any ideas?" yelled Steve to Zoey, ducking even lower to avoid another hail of fire from the merc soldiers. "Grenades! Tell me you guys brought grenades!"

"I brought grenades! Have some of _this!_" Amanda shouted from across the hall, and began emptying her launcher's contents into the enemy line. A table shattered, chairs flew apart into red-hot shrapnel and melted plastic, and Kevin even saw one man fly backwards and hit the wall, shaken but not killed. The salvo had crippled the barricade, but the mercs were still unharmed, and were now firing back at full force. One of the White Medallions was clipped in the arm, and collapsed bleeding as his comrades ripped open his jacket to treat the wound.

"Damn it! Blanca!" Steve turned to Weiss as she unleashed a battle cry and a vengeful burst of UMP 45 fire toward the loyalists. "We need a way through! What else did you bring?"

"I got an idea! EARPLUGS!" the woman ordered, and reached for a Pokéball on her belt. "Get your earplugs in! FIRE IN THE HOLE! GO! AMI!"

Kevin dropped to the ground and scrambled to find his earplugs. He'd just finished inserting them both when Blanca leapt up and hurled the ball at the mercs. With a flash of white light, a tiny Jigglypuff materialized, and immediately screamed in fear when it saw what kind of situation its master had just thrown it into.

"JIGGLY! JIGGLEEEEEEEY!"

"Ami! Use Sing!" shouted Blanca. The terrified Jigglypuff scampered for cover, then drew out a microphone from nowhere and began shakily singing into it.

"Jiiiii-ga-leeeee-puffffff…"

Kevin's eyelids began to feel unusually heavy, like he'd just been dosed with a mild sleeping drug. Shaking his head to clear it, he leaned out with his assault rifle and opened fire wildly, suppressing a pair of mercs who were trying to pull one of their wounded comrades to safety. Around the singing Jigglypuff, the other loyalists seemed to be moving more sluggishly, even slumping over as the hypnotic melody lulled them into a stupor. Some must have been wearing earplugs too, though, because Ami's song didn't seem to be affecting them in the slightest.

"Jiiii-ga-leeeee…EEEEEEEEEEE!" shrieked the Pokémon as a mercenary reached over the barricade and plucked her out of her hiding place with one hand. Raising a camo-patterned Pokéball of his own, he smashed Ami right in the head and was rewarded with a crushed microphone and a gout of blood from the Jigglypuff's face.

"JIGGLEEEY! JIGGLEEEEEEEY! LEEEEEEEEE!" As Ami struggled helplessly, the merc's combat-issue Pokéball popped open and sucked her in, sealing her away from Blanca forever.

"AMI!" Blanca made as if to leap up and dash after her stolen Pokémon, but Steve grabbed her arm and pulled her back down behind cover before the loyalists could draw a bead on her.

"Don't worry! We'll get her back!" he shouted, then turned to his Honey Badgers. "Take out the sleepers! Someone cover Nick!"

"I got it!" yelled Zoey, and slid a new magazine into her AK. "Over here, motherfuckers!" She poked the barrel out and began squeezing the trigger randomly, not so much concerned as where the bullets went so long as the mercs noticed them.

"_Buenas noches_," growled Nick, and fired. _BANG! _The sniper rifle kicked against his shoulder violently, and across the cafeteria, Kevin saw a man's head jerk backwards as the heavy bullet pierced his skull. The dead merc dropped behind the barricade and out of sight.

"Target do-_MIERDA SANTA!_" swore the Mexican soldier, and dropped down next to Jexis as a ferocious barrage from the right side of the room nearly decapitated him then and there. A bullet zipped right beneath his armpit, cutting a small, perfectly straight wound into the side of his chest. "OUCH! Son of a bitch, they're flanking us!"

"That's it! Enough!" Steve rolled over and waved toward the Battle Bus's cockpit. "Matt! MATT!"

A terrified Matt leaned out of the side door, cradling his shotgun in shaky hands. "Yeah?"

"We need to break through! Get her inside the building!"

"Wait, what?" Matt raised the shotgun and fired off three blasts, none of which connected with their intended targets. "_What_? You want me to drive it right in there?"

"AAAAGH! FUCK!" Jexis fell to the ground and grasped at her shoulder, wrenching out a two-inch piece of shrapnel. Wasting no time, she gritted her teeth, grabbed a bottle of disinfectant from her pack, and splashed some on the bleeding wound with a muffled scream of pain.

"Just do it!" Steve looked around, then settled on Kevin, who was crouched closest to the bus. "Get on the left gun and suppress them! SERGE! COVER HIM!"

"HOW YOU LIKE IT, COWARDS?" roared the huge Russian, and propped up Baba Yaga against a pair of chairs he'd stacked together. The RPD roared and spat furiously, sowing bullets left and right among the entrenched loyalists. Kevin heard a man cry out in pain, and took some comfort in knowing that at least one of Serge's frenzied shots had connected.

With a shuddering hiss, the Battle Bus rolled forward as Matt shifted it into gear and began easing it back through the massive hole in the wall. The White Medallions parted to let it through, dragging their injured squadmate out of the way as well. Bullets ricocheted off the vehicle's armor by the dozens, but only left dents where they struck. Noticing this, the mercs instead focused their fire on the front tires or the driver's seat itself, trying to either take out the wheels or put a lucky shot right through the bulletproof glass and into Matt's unprotected head.

Kevin hurled himself at the open side door and grabbed the rubber-coated railing. Matt braked, reached out a hand, and pulled him in to safety.

"You okay?" he yelled. Kevin nodded and ducked as a wayward shot pierced through the bus's old exterior and rebounded off the opposite side a mere two feet from his chest. Matt cursed loudly and pushed his friend toward the side machine gun mount. "I'm gonna take her straight up the right side! Just keep shooting until you run out! Go!"

As Matt turned back to the steering wheel, Kevin crouched low so the mercs couldn't spot him and grabbed the machine gun's handles. Through the rusty view slit, he could still see his squad and Blanca's, but now the angle of fire was much more clear. From what he could tell, the loyalists were _far_ beyond the point where they cared about what happened to the fleeing larvae. The hobos were gone now, and had suffered only a minimal amount of casualties from wayward shots or furious mercs and Sonichus. A few of the loyalists back in the safety of the hall had actually started taking out some of their frustration on the ferals, punting them, stabbing them, or putting a few bullets into the more annoying babies. Without the Sonichus watching, their long-standing hatred of the Sonees and Roseys was manifesting in gruesome detail.

Kevin almost wanted to just wait and let them thin the herds a little, but then a stray bullet _ding_ed off the edge of a nearby window, reminding him that these mercs wanted him and his squad dead as much as the little chus, if not more so.

Bracing himself for massive recoil, he swung the SAW toward a group of loyalists on the right flank and squeezed the trigger. The weapon kicked and bucked like a wild horse, sending his first few thunderous shots flying over his targets' heads and into the opposite wall. Kevin fought to keep it down, but the machine gun was nearly uncontrollable for him, even with the mount's support. Bracing his knee beneath the weapon's stock, he centered its sight on another merc and fired again. This time, the results were a little better. A red mist filled the air as a dozen heavy rounds penetrated the man's torso and shredded his innards into paste. Kevin grinned and swung the gun to the right, forcing the dead mercenary's comrades to dive for cover and fall back.

"Keep it up! I'm taking her in!" Matt shouted, and wrenched the Battle Bus into gear. The huge armored vehicle rumbled again and began rolling forward steadily. Kevin just kept on wrestling with the SAW until his arms felt like they were about to give out, but managed to take out two more mercs who were foolish enough to try shooting him through the view slit. He stole a glance through the closest window to see Al firing a Desert Eagle that he'd apparently just pulled out of thin air. Somehow, this didn't surprise Kevin at all. Beside him, Steve was shepherding the Honey Badgers around behind the moving bus, perhaps as part of some plan to use it as mobile cover. Blanca and her White Medallions quickly picked up the slack, catching a few more mercs in a withering crossfire between them and the Battle Bus's machine gun.

By now, the only larvae left in the cafeteria were either dead or well on their way, and the huge crowd of hobos had fled for any exit they could find. Kevin hoped the EHPF hadn't already set up a blockade around the front – otherwise, the tenants would find themselves trapped between a war zone and a firing line of furious Sonichus. The thought of Frank or George being zapped lent his arms a fresh burst of strength, allowing him to keep up the fire for just a bit longer…just a bit longer…

Off to the left, he saw one of Blanca's Jerkops fall backward, spraying blood, with a single hole punched in his face. The mercs may have been outgunned and doomed to fall back, but they obviously intended to take down as many PVCC operatives as they could in the process. Consumed with rage and sadness for the fallen Jerkop and his friends, Kevin traced the shots back to their origin and fired, filling the air with a deafening storm of bullets.

Suddenly, the tables and chairs of the enemy barricade flew into the air, borne aloft almost all at once as if lifted by invisible strings. As the surprised mercs scrambled to their feet and retreated to the safety of the hall, Kevin realized that the cafeteria had suddenly been filled with an eerie pale light, as if the moon itself was now shining in Soup Hotel #4.

"Luuuuuna."

Kuri's Lunatone drifted forward, wreathed in psychic energy as it pulsed and tossed the barricade's remnants into a pile where the mercs couldn't reach them. Satisfied, Kuri popped open her Pokéball and retrieved it, then stowed the ball on her belt.

"Kevin. Kevin! Hey! Stop firing, they're gone!" Matt grabbed a little hula dancer figurine on his dashboard and hurled it at Kevin, striking him in the shoulder. Surprised, the Jerkop released his grip immediately, his hands still shaking and clenched around an invisible trigger.

"Hey. You did good. Easy. Easy," said Matt in a calming voice. "You okay?"

Kevin nodded. His teeth were chattering so much that it was nearly impossible for him to speak, and judging by the metallic salty taste in his mouth, he'd accidentally bitten part of his cheek. Weighed against the three or four mercenaries he'd just killed, though, that seemed a small price to pay. The rest of the loyalists had indeed fled, perhaps out of fear, perhaps out of tactical advantage, but most likely because they didn't want to risk their necks against a SAW machine gun and two dozen angry, heavily-armed Jerkops who had come to Soup Hotel #4 for the sole purpose of killing anything and everything inside that wasn't a hobo, volunteer, or staff member.

"That was nice teamwork, you two." Zoey climbed into the Battle Bus, her face smeared with dirt and blood from half a dozen cuts. A line of red oozed from a particularly deep gash below her right eye. "Matt, we need you to evacuate two of Blanca's men – one dead and one wounded. Jexis took some deep shrapnel – we're getting her out of here as well. The Medallions have a medic we can use if need be."

Matt chewed his lip apprehensively. "How's everyone else?"

"Ready and…ow…willing to rain down some hell on the rest," growled Zoey as she pressed a finger against the dripping wound on her face. "Ow! Wish you could stay and see what Al did to Trogdor. Right now, though, I want you and Serge to take the wounded back to Slumberland and drop everyone off, then find someplace close to stash the Bus and watch for EHPF. Steve will radio you when we need an extraction."

"Got it."

"Okay, then. Kevin, you're with us." Zoey stepped over and frowned as she offered him a hand. "We need you, Shaw. Pull yourself together. You're the only one who's been through this hellhole."

"This…hellhole…was my home," panted Kevin, and took Zoey's hand. The Jerkop pulled him to his feet and gave him a pat on the shoulder.

"Welcome home," Zoey chuckled dryly. "Now you get to clear out the squatters."

Al and Steve were coordinating the next stage of the plan with Blanca when Kevin and Zoey emerged from the Battle Bus to let Serge enter. Two grim-faced White Medallions carried the limp body of their dead squadmate in as well, and the injured Jerkop and Jexis followed, clutching their respective bandaged wounds.

"Hey, you take care of that," warned Zoey as the medic passed them. "Make sure they give you antibiotics."

"You don't need to tell me twice," grunted Jexis, and climbed onto the bus. "See you guys back at HQ."

"See you," said Kevin, and waved.

"Is Matt okay?" asked Allie, who was fiddling with the many new buttons and valves Al had added to Trogdor. Kevin nodded and stepped forward to examine the upgraded weapon. The flamethrower now resembled something akin to a gun one would normally find in a video game – three tanks instead of one, two triggers, a secondary nozzle, a control panel with several buttons, a large black box with speakers and a volume control…

"Is that a _sound_ gun?" Kuri gaped in something akin to wonder. "We're going to blow their ears out with the _Mary Poppins_ soundtrack, right? Holy _shit_, that's brilliant!"

"No, but you're halfway there," Allie replied. "Al hasn't told me everything, but apparently it's gonna make hunting the ferals a whole lot easier. He tweaked the balance, too, so I don't wobble around so much when I swing it." She demonstrated, and Kevin had to admit, the Jerkop didn't seem as unstable as she had before Al's modifications. Much more graceful and fluid, yet intimidating nonetheless. True, most of the intimidation factor was due to the fact that she was carrying a flamethrower, but…

"Listen up!" yelled Blanca Weiss as she, Al, and Steve turned to address the gathered Jerkops. "We've only got maybe a few minutes before those mercs call in backup! We're going in level by level – my squad's taking the ground floor, Al's got the next, us next, and so on." Her eyes narrowed. "No chu survivors. Save any tenants you can, and watch for mercs. We do this, and it'll take _years_ for the ferals to recover. Now who's ready for a little afternoon genocide?"

"PVCC!" roared the Honey Badgers and White Medallions together.

"Jerkops, on me. Let's go get Dan some payback." Blanca turned toward the door and flipped her UMP 45 from semi to full auto with an audible _click_. As the White Medallions filed up behind her, Kevin noticed a flash of familiar auburn hair in their midst.

"Linda?"

"Hey, Kevin!" The formerly homeless woman stopped for a second and waved cheerfully before hurrying after her squad. "Later! We'll talk later!"

"See you guys at the extraction!" yelled Matt from the Battle Bus, and began backing the huge transport right out of the cafeteria and into the streets of CWCville. At last, the remaining Honey Badgers stood alone, surrounded by hobo corpses and dead chu larvae.

"Our turn," growled Steve, and hurriedly swapped the P90 for his trademark revolver and kukri combo. "Al?"

"Shaw's our map." The Legend glanced at Kevin and nodded. "Take us to the stairwell."

"Right." Filled with apprehension, Kevin led his squad across the cafeteria and through the double doors to the hallway. Up ahead, he caught a glimpse of Blanca's squad sweeping the reception area, and smiled as shrill little screams and gunfire began trickling out of the adjacent rooms. The White Medallions were known for their sheer heartlessness when it came to exterminating ferals, and it seemed like they were in nothing short of their prime right now.

"Hey. Focus," Zoey warned him. "We'll get our chance soon enough. Keep going."

"_Blanca here. We found a few pockets of ferals in the lobby. No problems here. No sign of Ami or the loyalists yet, either. You guys on the next floor yet? Over."_

"Heading upstairs now," replied Steve into his walkie-talkie as Kevin kicked open the emergency door and hurried inside to the stairs. "Let us know if you find any mercs. We'll do the same, over."

"_Copy. Out. Come here, you little…"_

"_WOSEEEEEE-"_

The radio cut out with a static hiss, and Kevin heard a muffled gunshot from below. _One more down, about a million to go._

And speaking of which…

"WOSEY! WAAAAAHHH!"

"GOO-GEEEE! SONEE! NEEEE!"

Moving with lightning speed, Al fired off two high-velocity nails directly up the stairs and into a pair of ferals who had been struggling to heave their dense, pudgy bodies over the steps. The Sonee screamed and fell backward head over stumpfeet as the rusty spear pierced his heart, while the Rosey took a nail right to the center of her misshapen head and slumped over, gurgling.

"Good shooting." Steve pushed past the squad commander and clicked his revolver's hammer back. "Stay alert. Someone must have let those two in on their way up."

"Chus?" breathed Kuri.

"No. Mercs." Nick bent down and rubbed a bloody boot print with his thumb. "They're up on this floor. Must've barricaded themselves on the other side. We'll never get in without letting them know we're…"

_Click!_ Allie inserted a keycard into the lock and slowly pushed it open for Steve. "Found that on the floor back in the cafeteria. I figured we'd need _some_ way to get in."

"Good thinking," Al muttered as the squad leader poked his revolver through the crack in the door and eased it open to reveal…

"Holy…fucking…_balls_," gasped Steve in something close to absolute ecstasy. "Al?"

Kevin eased himself past Zoey to get a look, while Al made his way to the front of the line to join Steve. What lay before him was nothing short of glorious. A massive crowd of nearly three hundred unbelievably vulnerable Sonees and Roseys waddled giggling and shrieking up and down the hall, playing with and hugging everything, going in and out of open hotel rooms without a care in the world, munching on various piles of candy and cookies scattered around the place, and bouncing off the walls in what could only be described as an orgy of sickeningly artificial cutesiness. This wasn't how children behaved in hotels. Not _normal_ children, anyway. Slow-in-the-minds and hyperactive sugar addicts, maybe.

And to top it all off, five yards away in the midst of all this chaos stood two EHPF officers and three loyalist mercenaries in full combat armor. Fortunately for the Honey Badgers, the mercs had their backs to them, and the Sonichus were too deeply engrossed in their argument to even bother watching Al and Steve sneaking up on them out in the open.

"…y'all gotta help us get the little babies out! It's Mayor Chandler's orders and…"

"_Mayor Chandler can go shove those orders up his pasty ass for all I care,"_ snarled a female soldier through her filter mask. _"Just get them out of here so we can secure this floor."_

"We're workin' on it," replied the first Sonichu. "The Sonees and Roseys of CWCville are just innocent little children! They don't understand! And watch y'all's mouth about our Creator!"

"_Oh, FUCK you, you spiky piss-stains,"_ groaned another merc. _"Creator this, innocent that - he's just a spoiled man-baby who shits himself and they're the Care Bears' even more retarded midget cousins. You're just lucky he pays us enough to keep us from killing all your bastard kids here and now. Oh yeah, don't think we wouldn't if we had the…"_

"_You know what? I think we ought to help them after all,"_ said the woman in a much-too-friendly voice. She stepped forward and offered her hand to the foremost, flustered Sonichu. _"Come on. Partners? We'll help you save the…babies."_

The EHPF officer drew back suspiciously, then smiled and reached out to accept in a sudden mood swing. "Well, that's great! Glad y'all decided to be…"

_BANG! BANG!_ Before the Sonichu could finish, the two other mercs had raised their M4s and fired off a single shot each. The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon collapsed, writhing and gasping in shock as blood spurted from the holes in their spiky heads. Around them, the feral Sonees and Roseys hadn't even noticed that their evolved counterparts were dead, and were all shooting the loyalists extremely annoyed, stressed looks. They didn't like the loud scary noise one bit…it was interrupting the endless KCWC pop music blasting out of the radios in each and every room.

"_Naïve motherfuckers." _The female merc put a pistol round into the nearest Sonichu's crotch and spat on the wound in disgust. _"Go secure the other exit. We'll say the rebels got these two."_

"These five."

Steve lashed out with his kukri, embedding it a full three-quarters of the way through her neck. If he'd had more room to swing, he just might have fully decapitated the woman with a single swipe. Beside him, Al raised both of his weapons and opened fire simultaneously, perforating one merc with five nails to the base of his skull and ripping the other's throat out with a deafening point-blank shot from his Desert Eagle. The Legend watched the second man bleed out on the floor for a couple of seconds, then blasted a quarter-sized hole through the first one's head and helmet.

"Clear," he announced, and sent the dying merc sprawling to the floor with a powerful kick.

"Clear," replied Steve as he pulled his kukri out of the woman's vertebrae. She was still alive and choking on her own blood, but the Jerkop didn't seem to mind at all. "Ferals now? Please?"

"Yeah. Allie, now would probably be a good time for you to hit the yellow button. When they get close enough, hit the red one and start spraying."

Allie blinked. "You mean the one with the **BAIT **label and this other one with a musical note on fire?"

"That's right. Everyone else, stand back." The Legend hurried back to the squad and ushered Allie toward the mob of ferals just as Steve managed to kick off an inquisitive Rosey. Allie looked confusedly over her shoulder at the rest of the Honey Badgers, all of whom were now being shepherded away by Al, Steve, and Zoey.

"Al…you did _test_ this, right?"

"It's not the buttons you've got to worry about. Go ahead and push it."

Allie complied. _Click! _Kevin instinctively covered his ears, expecting some new kind of horrible fiery explosion to come bursting out of Trogdor's toothy V-shaped mouth. But astonishingly, instead of the familiar howling roar of the inferno, a very different sound emerged to fill the air. A very…_musical_ sound.

_Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-ee!_

_A sweep is as lucky as lucky can be!_

_Chim chiminey, chim chiminey, chim chim cher-oo!_

_Good luck will rub off when I shakes 'ands with you,_

_Or blow me a kiss…and that's lucky too._

_Now as the ladder of life 'as been strung,_

_You may think a sweep's on the bottommost rung…_

Half amazed and half perplexed, Kevin glanced around at his squadmates as Dick Van Dyke's voice filled the Soup Hotel corridor. Everyone but Zoey, Al, and Steve was either wearing a shocked expression or a huge ear-to-ear grin. The three squad leaders simply looked on with knowing smiles.

"Goo-goo! Goo-gaa! Gaa-goo! YAY!"

Allie backed away in fear as the ferals surged down the hall at her. The Sonees and Roseys appeared to be filled with a form of berserk happiness, and all of them were now waddling towards the source of the _Mary Poppins_ music as fast as they could. Kevin didn't know what they were going to do when they reached her, but he could bet it was either going to be violently insipid or insipidly violent. Maybe both. In any case, he simply _had_ to see what was going to happen.

"And, three…two…one…" Al paused, as if holding for a dramatic silence before conducting an orchestra. His calm air diffused, and suddenly, there was murder in his eyes. "Burninate."

_Clang! Click! FWOOOSHHHH!_ Allie flipped her own welder's mask over her face, pushed the red button, and wrenched Trogdor's primary trigger down to **EXTRA CRISPY**, unloading a twenty-foot spray of flaming petroleum all over the stampeding Sonees and Roseys. Kevin only managed to shield his eyes just in time, before a wall of dry heat struck him full in the face. In a few moments, Allie had quickly transformed the hallway from a feral fun-land into a raging inferno, and then from that into a brand new circle of hell. The foremost few babies were the lucky ones – they ignited and shriveled like moths on a campfire in just under ten seconds at most. The ones further back were caught by flames of lesser intensity, which, unbelievably, was even worse for them than being directly incinerated. Blazing fuel soaked their fur and clothing, covering each joyful feral in a nice warm blanket of fiery death.

And now there was a very different sort of music - linked directly to the tiny subwoofers on Allie's flamethrower - blasting through the Soup Hotel like some glorious hymn of destruction.

_TROGDOOOOORRRRRRRR!_

_TROGDOOOOORRRRRRRR!_

_TROGDOR WAS A MAN!_

_I MEAN, HE WAS A DRAGON MAN!_

_OR…MAYBE HE WAS JUST A DRAGON!_

_BUT HE WAS STILL TROGDOOOOORRRRRRRR!_

_TROGDOOOOORRRRRRRR!_

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEY!" howled a Rosey as her skirt caught and began bathing her in red-hot flames. She tried to beat them out with her armstubs, but a fresh blast from Trogdor enveloped her little body in a new coat of fire before she could even think about stop, drop, and roll. Further down the hall, a Sonee shrieked as the very tip of the flame arc ignited his plastic shoes. Lurching up and down on his burning oversized feet like an obese rabbit, he could only dance wildly and flail around in panic as the hungry flames ate their way through the sneakers and began working their way up the fur of his lower body. By the time Allie's next burst finally claimed him for good, he was already ablaze from the waist down.

As soon as their selfish little brains managed to register the fact that music equaled fire and fire equaled death and death equaled no more music for them, the vast majority of Sonees and Roseys turned and fled for the "safety" of their rooms. Allie was laughing like a madwoman now, unleashing blast after blast down the hallway among the huge crowd of pink and yellow fuzzballs. And all the while, Strong Bad's brutally awesome voice continued to haunt the ferals as they screamed and burned and died by the dozens.

_BURNINATING THE COUNTRYSIDE!_

_BURNINATING THE PEASANTS!_

_BURNINATING ALL THE PEOPLES!_

_AND THEIR THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!_

_THATCHED ROOF COTTAGES!_

"Clear out those rooms, one by one! No survivors!" shouted Steve, and gratefully accepted a pair of frag grenades from Amanda. "Thanks. FIRE IN THE HOLE!" Wrenching the pin out, he booted a flaming Sonee through the nearest open door, tossed the explosives inside, then pulled the door shut, crushing a Rosey who was struggling to get in. The little chu was viciously squished in half with a gurgling squeal, but even if she'd been able to outrun the closing door, she was, quite assuredly, damned both ways.

_BANG! BANG!_ The grenades exploded simultaneously, buckling the hotel door nearly right off its hinges as the double storm of shrapnel and explosives shredded the room's occupants into little more than a geyser of viscera that quickly painted the walls, floor and ceiling with a thick salsa-like sludge. Steve peeked inside and fired off a couple of revolver shots, presumably ending the few survivors for good. Thankfully, most of the furniture in said rooms had been removed to make way for more toys, pillows, and big-screen TVs tuned to the All-_Mary Poppins_ Channel, so the Sonees and Roseys inside had almost no cover whatsoever.

And that was _exactly_ how the Honey Badgers liked it.

Kevin dashed forward to claim a room of his own before one of the other Jerkops could steal it. Stomping a dying Rosey's head into mush, he raised his AK-47 and began a form of impromptu target practice with the screaming, trapped chus. The big Russian assault rifle kicked against his shoulder again and again as he opened fire, filling the crowd of Sonees and Roseys with a storm of hot, piercing lead. He saw a Rosey's head burst open, spilling her brains and eyeballs onto the Sonee next to her. Another Rosey had both her armstubs blasted off and could only waddle in circles, wailing and screeching in pain until Kevin stepped inside and flattened her against the floor with the stock of his AK. Every blow and every bullet meant another kill, and every kill meant another step toward avenging the torture and inhumanity his hobo friends had been enduring for so long now.

It might have been four or five minutes later when Kevin finally killed the last Sonee in the room by sawing its head off with George's hunting knife, but by then, he'd fallen _far_ behind. Kuri already had three full rooms cleared, thanks in no small part to her tekko-kagi and dual paring knives. Nick was hurling plastic water bottles of gasoline through the doorways and flicking lit matches in after them, Steve and Amanda had teamed up for their breach-and-clear method of room destruction, Zoey was bayonetting chus and shooting them at the same time, Allie continued to rack up the highest kill count of them all, and as for the Legend himself…

Kevin gulped as he heard a long and choking "SONNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEE!" echoing from a room toward the end of the hall. He suddenly didn't even _want_ to know what new form of torture Al had discovered to unleash upon the chus. There was one room left to clear, and after that, only four more floors to go: four, six, eight, and ten. If there were as many chus on those levels as there were on this one, he had a feeling that the day's fun hadn't even _started _yet.

Somehow, the ferals had managed to close the door to this last hotel room, and even _that_ had probably been an accident. Indeed, two Roseys and a Sonee had been trapped outside, and were now shrieking in fear and pounding their armstubs against the unyielding wood. A smarter creature might have given up after about half a minute with no results, but Kevin had heard the door slam nearly three minutes ago. Rolling his eyes, he spun the knife around in his fingers and lunged for the would-be escapees.

_SQUISH! CRUNCH! SLASH! SLICE!_

Inside the brightly-lit, garishly colored room, the last surviving ferals huddled together, moaning as the thumping from outside ceased and a thick red pool began spreading toward them. Kevin wiped the dripping blade on his sleeve and raised the snout of his AK-47 against the electronic panel. _BANG!_ The heavy bullet ripped through metal, wood, and circuitry, rendering the security system completely useless. With a solid kick, Kevin smashed the remainder of the lock to pieces and sent the door flying open, so fast and so forcefully that a foolish Sonee was actually caught in the arc and crushed to bloody slop against the doorjamb.

Kevin didn't even need to say anything. He merely grinned and flung something wet, flat, and furry toward the closest Rosey. _Splat!_ The little creature shrieked as she pulled off the sticky projectile and found herself starting right into the empty eye sockets of a Sonee's face skin.

The ferals immediately broke out in a choir of "WAAAAHHHHH!"s and tried to waddle as far away from the Jerkop as they could. Unfortunately, there weren't too many places they could go.

"Oof!" A Sonee tripped and fell flat on its face, its feet treading air as it continued fruitlessly trying to crawl away to safety. Shouldering his AK, Kevin knelt beside the struggling chu and pinned it to the ground with one hand, then positioned his assault rifle's muzzle just a bit below where its yellow stub of a tail connected with its chubby hindquarters. The actualtechnique may have been intended for cats, but what the hell. He had to see just how well it worked with one of these abominations. With a grin, he removed the Kalashnikov's front iron sight and gave its barrel a single, mighty push, sending the steel tube tearing right up through the Sonee's butthole.

Somehow, he made it fit.

_Schlurp!_

"GOOOO-GEEEEEEE!"

Laughing with sick glee, Kevin hefted the AK-47 and its impaled, horribly violated new "silencer" into the air and squeezed the trigger. The Sonee's head erupted in a shower of gore as the barrage tore its skull to pieces and liquefied its brain. All the while, it continued on spraying deadly assault rifle rounds from its mutilated esophagus and windpipe. The panicked crowd of ferals could only scream and cry helplessly as the shower of bullets ripped huge swathes through their ranks, coating the opposite wall in a fresh coat of blood splashes and chunks of meat. Kevin emptied his magazine, swapped in a fresh one, and resumed firing. The Sonee-silencer still hadn't stopped kicking in rigor mortis.

Remembering that they still had four more floors left to purge, Kevin stopped as soon as he'd expended that second load of ammunition. What few ferals had survived his salvos were now crawling around pathetically, crying in the corners, or had simply given up from all the stress.

"Wo…sey…" a mutilated Rosey gasped, inches away from his foot. Half of her body had been shredded by bullets, yet she amazingly still found enough strength in her puny body to crawl all the way to his leg and start attempting to hug it, as if the action would somehow convince him to spare her from the genocide he and his friends were currently carrying out on her playmates and inbred family members.

_Oh, how wrong she was,_ Kevin thought with a cruel smile as he raised the heel of his boot and brought it down, crushing the Rosey's frail skull into a mess of bone shards and sticky brain matter. Stowing the AK on his back with its fleshy "silencer" still kicking feebly, he drew his pistol and fired off five shots in rapid succession, which instantly lowered the survivor count to a solid zero.

"_AND THE TROGDOR COMES IN THE NIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT!"_ screamed Allie and Strong Bad with one voice as Kevin emerged from the room to see her fire one last burst of superheated fuel into a wailing pack of ferals. The flamethrower cut out and died instantly as she released the trigger, timing it so that it coincided with the song's ending. She'd gone through its entire length a good three times already, and while it was certainly appropriate music for the situation, Kevin knew that even "Trogdor" would get annoying pretty quickly unless Al had also installed a headphone jack for her. Thankfully, he had.

"Regroup!" yelled Zoey, and quickly punted the Sonee she'd been torturing straight up into the ceiling. The feral burst into chunks as it impacted on the solid surface and adhered itself with its own sticky entrails. It hung there, dripping and flat, like the world's most disturbing chandelier.

Al emerged from his "house of horrors" with the hem of his trench coat soaked in blood, dragging a chain of twenty still-living ferals behind him. Kevin nearly collapsed with disgust and astonishment when he realized the Legend had somehow stitched every single Sonee and Rosey together, mouth to anus, using a roll of copper wire and some pliers. In five minutes. And with 100% medical accuracy.

"Good. Fucking. GOD." Amanda stole a single glance into the room and slammed the door shut without a moment's hesitation, locking it for good so no one else could see the rest of Al's gruesome handiwork. "How'd you even…_you nailgunned 'em to the walls with their own ribs_?"

"They'll die. Eventually." Al smiled and nodded to Steve. "That felt good. Just like old times, right?"

"Damn right, Al," replied Steve, and flicked a scrap of meat off his sweatshirt. The white cotton now bore many bloody stains, and Kevin had a feeling that Steve would soon be sporting a whole new wardrobe of dark red clothing. That is, if Kuri didn't beat him to it first. She was literally drenched in blood, and in the pale light of her Lunatone, she now resembled some vengeful demonic girl straight out of a Japanese horror movie. Much like Al, Kevin knew it would probably be better if he didn't ask about what Kuri and her psychic Pokémon had been doing to the hoglets in the rooms she'd picked out. He was willing to bet it had something to do with the dozens of squishy _pop_s he'd been hearing for the past few minutes.

"White Medallion lead, Honey Badger lead," Steve spoke into his shoulder radio. "Blanca, come back, over."

"_Blanca here. Go ahead, Steve, over."_

"We just cleared out a whole army of ferals and a merc squad up here. How are you doing? Over."

"_We ran into a few loyalists, but we're all still alive," _replied Weiss shakily. She sounded close to tears. _"I haven't found Ami yet. Were any of your mercs carrying Pok__é__balls? Over."_

Steve looked at Zoey, who shook her head. "Negative. Sorry, Blanca. We're heading up to the fourth floor, where are you? Over."

"_Third floor. Holy hell, they're everywhere! Thank goodness we brought Charmeleons, over."_

"Right, you get back to burning 'em out. We'll check in on you on the way up. Out." Steve let out a disappointed sigh as he turned back to Al. "Why didn't we think of that? Pokémon never run out of fuel."

"We're wasting time," Zoey interjected. It was at times like these that she truly shone as Steve's counterpart and voice of reason. "I'm pretty sure the mercs took off back to base as soon as they realized we were here for the babies. You saw what those three did – they don't care about the chus. If anything, we're probably going to have to fight our way back downstairs through a whole mob of angry Sparkies."

"Leave that to Blanca and I," replied Al with a reassuring smile as he dropped the sewn-together conga line of Sonees and Roseys to the floor. They weren't going anywhere until they learned to work and move together as a single organism…in other words, the little chus were already dead. "Now then, Kevin? To the next floor, if you please."

**Soup Hotel #4, 3rd floor, air ducts**

Surrounded by impenetrable steel walls on all sides, Sugarplum Fury stalked through the air duct, her nostrils flaring as the all-too-familiar odors of smoke and chu blood wafted up from the corridors below. There were humans here too, and Pokémon…_normal_ Pokémon, from the sound of it. The blue girl she hated so much had brought her floating stone moon, and she'd also glimpsed a few of the orange fire-lizards roasting the bad humans and larvae on the ground floor, just after she set off on her own to find more prey.

Sugar licked her bloody muzzle and let out a satisfied growl. The hunting was excellent today, and she'd been given a head start as well. When her masters started fighting the bad humans and Steve had given her the "safety off" order, she'd obediently pursued the fleeing Sonees and Roseys right into the nearest air duct – a place she knew no human could enter. The going was slippery, rough, and very strenuous on the upward climbs, but if there was one thing the honey badger was built for, it was hunting prey through the most complex of passages.

And fortunately for her, said prey was much plumper than the scraggly ferals that Steve or Al or Zoey usually fed her on their hunts. The larvae may have known the layout of the duct system more intimately than her, but for one thing, she was much more highly adapted than they were for traversing tight corridors. The fatter chus were easy prey – Sugar didn't even bother eating those ones, but merely tore out their throats or ripped their bellies open with her claws to spill their intestines. So far, she'd slain about twenty-four in all…a record even for her. Then again, an opportunity like this had never before presented itself, and for the first time in her life, the honey badger truly felt as if she was finally reaching her full killer potential.

The ferals could smell her too…that much was certain. She'd been driving most, if not all of the duct-dwellers up floor by floor, killing and mauling as she went and leaving a long bloody trail of Sonee and Rosey corpses in her wake. Sugar could hear them too – dozens of them, maybe even hundreds – all scurrying and scampering up and away from this new and frightening scent. The scary heat and lights and sounds from outside would keep them trapped inside the ventilation system, and eventually they'd be forced up to the top, where she could kill to her heart's content.

Until then, Sugarplum Fury intended to keep on doing what she did best.

Padding softly around a bend, the black-and-white-striped killing machine paused and warily sniffed the air. Those same humans, the good ones, were definitely close. Sugar shuffled over to the nearest opening – a mesh-covered vent in the bottom of the duct – and peeked out.

"CHAAAAARRRR!"

"GOO-GEEEEEE!"

"WAAAAAAHHHH!"

Below lay an rippling, screaming pink and yellow river, hemmed in by flames on all sides and two of those big fire-lizards who were currently engaged in alternately torching and ripping apart the little blobs by the dozens. Blood spattered the walls as the Charmeleons feasted jubilantly, eager to enjoy their opportunity to the fullest now that they realized they could devour these pathetic baby Pokémon without apprehension or restraint. Their natural savagery, suppressed after so many years of training and restrictive battles, was manifesting in full force.

Sugar snarled with jealousy as the lizards seized a squealing Sonee between them and pulled it messily in half, spilling its innards all over the place. She almost wanted to go down there and join the slaughter, but her job was to purge the air ducts. Al's instructions had been _very_ clear, and she trusted the Legend above all others…even her current master Steve.

A door burst open somewhere below, and voices reached her ears. Sugar could only understand a few specific words that were in her command vocabulary, but she lingered nonetheless. After all, her prey wasn't going anywhere fast.

"What'd Morrison say?"

"No dice. Blanca's going berserk over Ami. Not to mention Dan."

"Jesus, I'd hate to be a merc right now. I think we'd…hang on, you got a little…_there_."

"Oh, God! Fuck,I hate these things! It's like stomping on water balloons! Eeewww!"

Sugar listened for a few more seconds, then took off again. The air duct was long and straight, and led right to an upward slope at the end of the third floor corridor. Unfortunately, there weren't any ferals that she could see, but a few might still be hiding somewhere. They certainly weren't fast movers by any definition, but feral Sonees and Roseys _were_ very good at concealing themselves in dark, cramped places. If she'd been down in the sewer, _they_ probably would have been chasing _her_ instead. These chus, fortunately, were well on the way to turning fully homebred. They were fat, lazy, stupid, and clumsy…the absolute easiest prey she'd ever hunted.

Clawing her way up the slippery metal duct one paw at a time, the honey badger growled gently to herself in anticipation. The smell of fear was stronger now…definitely much more so than in the lower tunnels. She slowed down and began creeping silently forward. Her prey was close…_very_ close. At the top of the ramp, Sugar found herself facing a sharp left curve, and no other paths. Sleek and silent as a shark, she turned the corner and…

"SONEEEEE!"

"GOO-GOOOO!"

"GRRRROWWRRRR!" Sugar pounced like a mountain lion, snarling and baring her teeth as the first feral tripped over its own feet and fell forward straight onto its face. Carried by momentum, she hit the other one in the back and felt her claws sink deep into its flesh. She was firmly locked in, and now there was no way her victim was getting out alive. As the Rosey struggled feebly, squealing at the top of its lungs, the furious honey badger fastened her jaws around its semblance of a neck and crunched down hard, unhindered by her prey's soft, undeveloped headspikes. The feral's tiny spine shattered under the massive amount of biting force, paralyzing it instantly. Sugar withdrew her claws from the Rosey and nudged the limp chu over onto its back, then sank her teeth into its pink, flabby throat. A warm gush of salty blood rapidly saturated her tongue.

Swallowing the mouthful of tender Pokémon flesh, Sugar left the Rosey to bleed out and turned to her next victim. The Sonee was still trying to push itself up with its puny armstubs, kicking wildly as she closed in on it like a lioness approaching a dying zebra. She hadn't even needed to wound the pathetic little creature.

_ZZZZAP!_

Sugar yelped and leapt back as the jolt of bioelectricity coursed through her tough, furry body. It hurt, but she'd had worse…much worse. Back in the hot grassy world she'd been born into, she'd regularly received snakebites, bee stings, and other poisonous wounds without so much as a wince. A pathetic little Spark wasn't about to stop her.

"GRRRROWWR!" she roared, and crunched down on one of the Sonee's sneakers with her powerful jaws. The little chu screeched in pain as it felt its foot bone shatter to pieces inside its blue plastic shell. With its other one, it tried unsuccessfully to kick Sugar in the face, but the honey badger merely pinned down her floundering victim with her front paws and pulled, tearing a ragged mess of flesh and some pieces of shoe right off the bony stump.

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! WAAAAAHHHHHH!" wailed the Sonee. Sugar ignored it and immediately gnawed off its tiny tail. Unlike its relative Punchy Sonichu, though, this chu was no fighter, and definitely not yet ready for evolution. All it could do was writhe and cry and scream some more until Sugar decided enough was enough. Flipping it over like she'd done with the Rosey, she pierced its belly with a single claw and unzipped the shrieking Sonee, then buried her maw in its slippery innards. She didn't eat any of it, but merely chewed and spat and tore away shreds of intestines and organs until the chu finally lay as limp and lifeless as the Rosey.

Sugar raised her dripping head and shook it again, dislodging little scraps of meat and a shower of blood. The rancid smell was masking the scents of other, more _alive_ prey, and she had to move on now if she hoped to keep up her already excellent pace.

Twenty-six kills…and she still had seven floors to go. Truly, this was the best day of her life.

**Soup Hotel #4, 4th floor**

"Two, three, GO!" shouted Allie.

Kevin slid his keycard into the reader, waited for the _click_, and kicked the door open so his squadmate could hose the infested hotel room with Trogdor the Burninator. The larval chus hiding inside had only half a second to let out terrified screams before they were enveloped by hungry flames and incinerated into a delicious-smelling crispy fatty mess. Allie sprayed the Sonees and Roseys for about ten seconds, then shut off the flamethrower to give them some time to cook. Once the heat had died out, the Jerkops stepped in to take care of the meager survivors.

"You ever thought of going into the extermination business?" Kevin asked, his voice muffled by the dust mask he'd acquired back in the cafeteria. "I mean, what do you think…hang on."

"SONEEEEEEEE!" a Sonee wailed as the Jerkop plucked it out from under the bed it had been attempting to scurry under. The larva struggled and kicked and even tried to bite him, but Kevin had long ago learned the proper way to hold a feral so it couldn't nip his fingers with its mouth. Chuckling to himself, he carried his new prisoner back to Allie and plunged its face directly into the hottest part of Trogdor's pilot light.

"As I was saying," he continued, ignoring the piercing shrieks and hissing of flesh in his hands, "what do you want to do once all this is over? Career-wise, I mean?"

Allie shrugged and tilted her flamethrower so that both of the feral's eyes were immediately reduced to bubbling black goo. "I don't know. With the time rift and everything, I'm still in my early twenties…guess I'll go to college. I always wanted to be…well, you'll think it's silly."

"No I won't," Kevin assured her. By now, the Sonee's face had almost been burnt clear off the bone. Fat and skin were running down its head like candle wax, revealing a blackening skull beneath. All the while, it was still alive and screaming. "Come on, I promise I won't laugh."

"…a firefighter," Allie finished, and her cheeks turned red with embarrassment behind her steel mask. "Stupid, right? I mean, look at what I've been doing here." She lowered Trogdor as the feral finally shuddered and died in her squadmate's hands. Kevin turned and flung it against the wall, shattering its skull with a splintering _crack_. "But yeah, I've wanted to be one ever since I was little. Now…after this," she unconsciously rubbed the discolored burnt skin on her face, "well, I guess I want to keep this stuff from happening to other people. Save them, you know."

"I don't think you ever told me what happened," replied Kevin. "I mean, I _know_ what happened, but I've never heard it from you."

"There'll be another time. We're on a tight schedule." Allie gave the room a final sweep with her eyes, then pulled open the closet door and sprayed the dozen or so ferals hiding inside. Kevin listened to them burning and dying for a few moments, then followed his squadmate out the door. It had been over a month since their reunion, and he was still having trouble accepting the horrific burn that marred Allie's otherwise pretty face. The heartless chus had disfigured her without a second thought, and thanks to their cruelty, she'd carry the mark for the rest of her life.

Kevin had no idea how he could possibly survive in a world without so many Sonees and Roseys available for him to take his anger out on. No wonder Al, Steve, Zoey, and Kuri derived so much pleasure from dispatching the larvae as messily and painfully as they could. For them, the kills weren't just catharsis…they were statements. Every Sonee was a tiny part of Chandler himself, and every Rosey was exactly what Chandler wanted girls to be like. He'd designed both species to be the perfect representations of his saccharine, disgustingly idealized childhood, but in the process, he'd also given life to the abominations who now infested CWCville like plague rats.

_CRUNCH!_

The Jerkop stepped out of the blazing room just before an airborne Sonee pancaked on the wall three feet away. Momentum squashed the chu's dense little body up against its head like a fleshy accordion, crushing its skull and squirting its insides out through a dozen gaping rips in its fuzzy skin. Kevin followed its trajectory back to Zoey, who was now playing Kick-a-Chu with every Sonee and Rosey in reach. It made sense – back in her school days, she'd been one of the fiercest offensive players on the CWCville High girls' soccer team.

Across the hall, Amanda had abandoned Steve's partnership in lieu of her own idea of "fun." That "fun" involved making living Molotov cocktails out of ferals by force-feeding them multiple pints of gasoline and old hobo liquor and cramming fuel-soaked socks down their throats or up their buttholes. Either way worked just as well once the cloth ignited.

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" she yelled as she flicked her lighter and lobbed a gasping, choking Rosey through the adjacent doorway. _BOOM! FWOOOOOSHHHH! _A blistering fireball exploded out of the hotel room, nearly scorching Amanda's eyebrows clean off as she leapt back, swearing like a sailor. Undaunted, she snatched up another full bottle of moonshine and selected a panicked Sonee for her next cocktail. Good thing their little bodies could hold so much liquid.

Nearby, Nick knocked a fleeing Sonee right onto its face and sliced off both of its stumpfeet with a single cut from his machete. The feral bawled and screamed and tried to crawl away, but in vain. Bit by bit, the Mexican soldier carved it apart until it was little more than a head and a mess of flesh and ragged skin. It still hadn't died, so Nick simply abandoned it and began hacking and slashing a bloody swathe through a thick crowd of squealing baby chus.

Steve, oddly enough, didn't seem to be as involved in the slaughter as the other Honey Badgers. Kevin thought he was simply taking a breather until the Jerkop knelt down and offered a Rosey a few wrapped candies. Forgetting all about Steve's murderous history and the plight of her fellow ferals, the little chu gleefully grabbed the sweets, tore them open with her baby teeth, and gulped them down in a flash with a happy "YAY!"

Almost instantly after she'd devoured the "candy," the Rosey screeched and doubled over in pain, heaving and coughing up blood as a thousand incredibly toxic Vileplume spores began dissolving her from the inside out. Steve chuckled as the feral's liquefied innards spilled out of her little harelip mouth and began soaking into the carpet. He grabbed a Sonee from the crowd and pitched it over to a blood-soaked Kuri, who immediately intercepted the flying chu with the blades of her tekko-kagi. She pulled it off, threw it away, then motioned to her Lunatone and skipped through an open doorway with an excited giggle. The hovering psychic Pokémon followed obediently, and moments later, the horrible squishing and popping noises had resumed.

Having learned a few lessons from the second floor's purge, Kevin quickly located a non-cleared room and inserted his keycard. The lock clicked, but for some reason, he couldn't pull open the door. Frustrated, he began smashing his way through it with the stock of his AK-47. The hard wood splintered and cracked, but failed to give way. Kevin delivered a few good kicks to the weakened door, and finally managed to break it down after about a minute's struggle.

_How the hell did the little fuckers lock the door?_ he thought to himself as the wooden door fell apart with a crash, revealing a room packed with…

"Jesus Christ! It's the goddamned cavalry!" shouted a familiar voice from inside a crowd of shivering, miserable hobos. "We thought you was dead, kid!"

"FRANK!" yelled Kevin, grinning from ear to ear as the belligerent homeless man shuffled forward and tearfully embraced him. "Why didn't you get out of here, you old son of a bitch?"

"I stayed, kid. We all stayed 'ere to ride out the storm," growled Frank, and peered over Kevin's shoulder with hateful eyes at the garishly-colored sea of ferals outside. "An' it looks like ya jus' brought a bigger storm with ya."

"We'll get you out. We'll get everyone to safety," Kevin replied determinedly, and released his old friend. Looking around, he could see that the room held about twenty hobos – men, women, a few scrawny kids, and a filthy, weeping baby girl. Carl, George, and Missy June weren't among them. "Did the others make it?"

"Dunno. Hope ta all that's holy they did." Frank scratched his scraggly hair and suppressed a cough. "Lissen, ya got a plan? They're all kinda scared an' it's gonna be 'ard enough tryin' ta get 'em all out past those fuckin' rats. Goddamn things tried ta force their way in 'ere. Lucky fer us they jus' up an' quit after 'bout thirty seconds."

Kevin chuckled mirthlessly. "Sounds about right. Believe me, we're working on it. I don't know what the plan is, but I can take you to someone who does. Is anyone injured?"

Frank shook his head. "Nah. Jus' a few of us too old an' too young fer movin' fast."

"We'll cover you." The Jerkop turned to the crowd. "Who here is able to fight?"

A few men halfheartedly raised their hands. Kevin sighed and shouldered his AK. "Okay. Let's try this again." He straightened up and shot the hobos his absolute toughest gaze. "Who here wants to help me kill every last rat bastard baby chu in this entire fucking building?"

Every single hand in the room shot up, including the little girl's.

**Outside, in the hallway**

By now, the fourth floor was in pretty much the same state as the second – fires everywhere, blood soaking through the carpet, bits and pieces of burnt and mutilated chu larvae splattered across every surface…in other words, the Honey Badgers' usual calling cards.

For some reason, the sprinklers weren't firing – just one more retarded "safety measure" that Chandler had implemented to keep the ferals from accidentally zapping themselves. Water conducted electricity after all, and he couldn't have the "helpless widdle bay-bees" exposed to that sort of danger, even if it meant sacrificing the Soup Hotels' fire prevention measures.

_Well, he's going to seriously regret ever doing that after he sees how we burned up all his precious Sonees and Roseys, _thought Steve as he stepped forward and booted a Rosey into a pile of blazing carcasses. Her skirt and bow and fur caught immediately, aided by a heavy load of melted fat dripping from the makeshift pyre. The chu screamed in agony and attempted to beat out the fire with her armstubs, but the greasy flames soon reduced her to nothing more than a little writhing black and red blob.

Steve felt an armstub pawing at his leg and reached back to retrieve a Sonee with most of its stumpfeet burned clean off. The plastic of its little sneakers had melted and was now dripping down in blue rivulets over the hideous rounded legless appendages that were supposed to be its feet, leaving blisters and brown burn marks in their wake.

"How can they even walk on those things?" Steve muttered to himself as he knelt down, grabbed the Sonee's bulbous head with one hand, and twisted it right off. Tossing the still-blinking head and its writhing, squirting body to the same fiery fate as the Rosey, the Jerkop rose to his feet and sighed. He wished he hadn't used up all of his Vileplume candy so quickly. Oh well.

The sound of a good two dozen pairs of feet behind him immediately jarred Steve from his thoughts. Expecting mercs or EHPF, he whirled around with his revolver drawn, but instead received quite a shock to discover that Kevin had returned from one of the rooms with a group of about twenty homeless men, women, and children. All were armed with nail-covered chair legs, pieces of broken glass, shattered beer bottles, and other trash they'd managed to repurpose into weapons. And most importantly, every single one of them looked like they were more than ready to rain down some unholy terror upon the little abominations that had ruined their lives.

"I found a few volunteers," Kevin reported matter-of-factly, grinning as he gestured to his new army of would-be exterminators.

"So you did." Steve smiled back. "I don't recall ordering reinforcements, but right now, I just want as many larvae dead as possible, really, _really_ fast." He patted Kevin's shoulder. "Congratulations. You just got a temporary promotion. Take them and clear out the sixth floor, then head to ten. We'll finish up, clear eight, and meet you topside. Think you can handle it?"

"Honestly?" Kevin chuckled. "Just try and keep up with us."

"You're on." The Jerkop popped open his revolver's cylinder and began swapping the spent bullets for new ones. "Now get to it. See you on the roof."

**Soup Hotel #4, rear stairwell**

Kevin pushed the maintenance door open so fast he nearly knocked Linda and another White Medallion over the side of the safety rail. In his haste to beat Steve to the top, he'd forgotten that Blanca Weiss's Jerkops were on their way up as well.

"Hey! What the hell did you…Kevin!" exclaimed the auburn-haired Jerkop as soon as she realized what had just happened. "What's going on?"

"Come on Linda, keep going," urged the man behind her.

"You go ahead. Tell Blanca I'll catch up," replied Linda, and stepped aside to let her squadmate pass. She looked back at Kevin and smiled. "Long time, huh?"

Kevin chuckled. "Definitely. How's your sister?"

"Tammy's fine. We joined up a few days ago – that's probably why you didn't know we were here. They've got her working in maintenance, but she wants to join a squad soon. I hate to say it, but I think she might be up for Dan's position after today."

"Was he the guy who got killed down in the cafeteria?"

Linda nodded. "I didn't know him too well, but he seemed like a nice man. Anyway, I see you found yourself some new friends." She stared at the motley crew of hobos waiting impatiently in the doorway and the hall. "Listen, let's talk more once we get back to Slumberland. Tammy needs some friends too, and you look like you're about her age…"

"I'll see what I can do." Kevin smiled and gave Linda a quick hug. "Go kill some more chus."

"Gladly. You too." The Jerkop turned and dashed up the stairs, eager to return to her absolute favorite hobby in the world. Kevin followed her a few steps, then stopped to let his new squad file through the doors. So far, Frank (his appointed lieutenant) was doing a pretty good job of keeping the extremely angry gang of hobos in line.

They made their way up past the next floor, savoring the oh-so-satisfying sounds of unspeakable brutality and carnage that the other Jerkops were laying down on the Sonee and Rosey infestations. From what Kevin could tell, some of Blanca's squadmates were using their own trained Charmeleons on the ferals. He would have loved to peek in and see what kind of pandemonium they were causing, but then again, he had his own kind of chaos that he wanted to unleash upon the chus.

Kevin grinned to himself as he looked over his shoulder and saw the hobos climbing the stairs with murder in their eyes. It was pretty exciting to be leading an actual squad of his own. Was this how Steve and Zoey felt all the time? Of course, they were leading experienced Jerkops and not a ragtag band of homeless people, but it was pretty much the same deal right now – send a mob of furious men and women to kill off a bunch of deformed little fuzzbag mutants…just like the ones waiting right through the next door.

_Click! WHAM!_ Kevin unlocked the sixth floor corridor and kicked open the utility doors, then stepped forward into another hallway full of giggling, frolicking Sonees and Roseys. This time, however, the recolored demons didn't quite have the floor all to themselves.

Now Kevin realized what had happened to most of the Soup Hotel's cleaning staff. Right in the middle of the corridor lay a hastily-assembled barricade of laundry carts and various furniture items, encircling a group of what looked like five or six maids and maintenance workers, along with a few hobos lucky enough to escape the plague of babies. Surrounded by a seething horde of recolored hedgehog larvae, the poor survivors were frantically struggling to keep the swarm from breaking through. However, because of Chandler's new laws to protect said larvae, the staff members and residents appeared to be fighting back restrainedly, taking care not to seriously hurt or kill any of the dirty, fuzzy baby chus. Fear, and only fear, kept them from unleashing their rage upon their tormentors.

"Seeeee! Seeeeee!" whined a Rosey as it plopped down from the side of the barricade and immediately hugged a janitor's leg. The maid beside him hurriedly peeled it off her coworker and lobbed the bawling chu away into the air, but the Rosey's skirtachute deployed almost instantly, allowing it to glide straight back behind the wall of furniture. It landed safely and waddled right up to another maid, making hideous "WAAAHHH!" sounds as it begged for food, toys, comfort, _Mary Poppins_, or whatever else its oversimplified mind craved at the moment.

On the other side, a trio of Sonees and a Rosey managed to make their way over the wall unnoticed, dropping to the floor with squeals of unnatural happiness. They quickly started playing tag with each other, waddling around between and over the panicked humans and simultaneously drawing attention away from their comrades outside. More larvae spilled through the leaks in the barricade, squeezing their pudgy bodies through every nook and cranny like huge furry maggots. In seconds, the survivors were fighting off about three dozen chus at once, and given the babies' track record, it probably wouldn't be too long before they got all stressed and hungry and reverted to their feral behavior of trying to eat people.

"So this is what you guys had to deal with while I was away?" muttered Kevin as he placed his assault rifle back in its cradle with its "silencer" still intact and drew his knife and pistol.

Frank nodded and drew a switchblade from his coat pocket. "Ne'er thought I'd see a day where we could kill 'em all an' not hafta worry 'bout the Sparkies. Kid, yer a miracle worker."

"Just doing my job." Kevin grinned and turned to address his hobos. He pointed to the ongoing struggle at the barricade. "Keep them alive. Kill everything else. Any questions?"

The furious stares and vengeful expressions from the crowd were a good enough answer for him.

"Right." The Jerkop whirled around and chopped a hand toward the sea of ferals. "So let's go take back our Soup Hotel. NO SURVIVORS! GET 'EM!"

"YAAAAAAAHHHHH!" roared the hobos as they surged past Kevin and into the sea of chus. Before the Sonees and Roseys knew what was happening, the army of homeless men and women crashed into them like a tidal wave of murderous rage, kicking and striking and chopping and stabbing and unleashing more than two weeks' worth of pent-up hatred at the sheer injustice of everything Chandler had done to them when he'd relocated the ferals into their home.

"NEEE!" screamed a Sonee as it turned to waddle away, but a furious woman quickly snatched it up by the ears and began carving open its belly with a broken beer bottle. Beside her, her two preteen children, a boy and a girl, had caught a pair of Roseys and were now smashing their malformed heads up and down against the floor as if they were trying to crack eggs. A bearded hobo lashed out again and again with a nail-covered table leg, spearing and impaling baby chus with every blow. Frank himself had become a dirty, patchy whirlwind of destruction, alternately slashing open Sonees and Roseys with his switchblade and wrenching off as many heads, armstubs and stumpfeet as he could. In seconds, the old hobo had plunged deep into the heart of the swarm and was now determinedly cutting and ripping his way toward the besieged staff.

Working quickly, the murderous hobos began shepherding the stressed and terrified chu larvae away from the barricade and into individual hotel rooms, where they could easily dispatch entire groups of the abominations of their own accord. Remembering that he too was supposed to be helping them thin the tide, the Jerkop drew his knife and began mopping up any chus that his new army had missed.

"WOSEEEEEEEY!"

Kevin grabbed up the screeching Rosey, slit her throat, and hurled the larva away to let it bleed out. Tossing the hunting knife from one hand to the other, he swung it down and stabbed another Rosey through the belly, then rammed the whole knife and its shrieking cargo into the wall. Impaled and dying, the little creature could only writhe and scream as her mangled intestines slithered out around the steel blade. Abandoning the weapon, Kevin stepped past a few hobos and kicked over the nearest laundry cart. A single Sonee popped out, covered from head to stumpfeet in unwashed socks and underwear. It giggled and snuggled down inside its filthy cotton bed, utterly oblivious to the massacre going on around it. Typical.

Looking up, Kevin noticed a split in the hallway with a sign that read **Laundry Room**, and suddenly a wicked idea formed in his mind. They might have been pressed for time, but he was going to make sure this Sonee and a few of his friends learned a few lessons about proper hygiene before the day was done. Grabbing the entire cart, he tipped the rest of the clothes out, unearthed the Sonee, and tossed it in.

"Goo-goo!" it squeaked in surprise as it smacked the bottom of the basket and began confusedly waddling around inside. Kevin pushed the cart down the carnage-stricken hall toward the laundry room, grabbing Sonees and Roseys at random and adding each one to his makeshift prisoner transport. By the time he finally reached the door and pushed the cart inside, he'd taken about ten or twelve captives. The little chus began whining and squealing at him, no doubt trying to let the Jerkop know that they didn't like being packed together like sardines and that it was causing them too much stress. Kevin couldn't have cared less about what they thought. Anyway, it wouldn't matter in a few minutes.

The laundry room wasn't particularly big, but it had washers, dryers, and plenty of toxic cleaning chemicals that Jexis probably would have had a field day with if she hadn't been injured and evacuated. Kevin wheeled the cart over to the nearest washing machine and popped open the lid, then began snatching the chus from the basket and dropping them inside, one after the other. The baby hedgehogs squealed and struggled, but before long, the inside of the washing machine had been packed to the brim with squirming pink and yellow bodies. A light blinked on underneath an instruction label, notifying him to add some detergent to the automatic dispenser.

What he had in mind wouldn't be the cleanest alternative, but it would be a lot more entertaining than just a simple wash.

Kevin opened up a cabinet full of cleaning supplies to find a single Rosey fast asleep on the top shelf, giggling to herself and making soft snoring noises. She'd probably wandered inside a few hours ago, perhaps hoping to find some candy in the laundry room, or maybe a pretty new skirt.

"Wake up, sweetie," he said gently, and plucked the sleepy chu off the shelf.

"Mmmwosey," the Rosey cooed happily, and hugged his wrist with her little armstubs. Nuzzling the Jerkop's hand, she began licking up the blood that had stained his fingers. Maybe she thought she was eating ice cream, or a big lollipop. Kevin managed to overcome his natural urge to vomit, set her down on an adjacent counter, and instead concentrated on locating some detergent. Bingo. Right behind where the feral had been napping sat the exact thing he was looking for.

As an apparent "friend" of Mayor Chandler, the sheer influence of BILLY MAYS and his charismatic advertising skills could be seen in the wide variety of infomercial-marketed products that the citizens of CWCville used every day. MAYS may have been a spy and administrator for the PVCC all along, but he was also a businessman, and content to sell Chandler vast quantities of Mighty Putty, Grater Platers, Big City Slider Stations, and most importantly…OxiClean.

Kevin grabbed the huge jug of detergent, unscrewed the cap, and positioned it right over the Rosey's face. The little chu opened her eyes, blinked, and giggled at the big bearded man smiling down at her from the jug. She'd heard BILLY MAYS vociferously describing the benefits of his products on TV many times, and furthermore, she somehow knew that her grandpa really liked him and that he sold things for mommies to use in the kitchen to keep their sweetbolts happy.

Then the big bearded man tipped sideways, and before the Rosey could tilt her misshapen head, Kevin forced the end of the OxiClean bottle into her mouth. The Jerkop wasn't too fond of ripping off quotes, least of all the ones his squadmates had made up, but since Al was currently two floors down, he couldn't resist borrowing one of the Legend's most famous send-off lines.

"Eat it, fucker," he snarled, and squeezed the detergent right down the Rosey's throat.

"WOGLUGLUGLUGLUGLGUBUGHUGH!"

The little pink creature expanded like a water balloon as Kevin squirted immense quantities of OxiClean into her stomach. Gripping her head to make sure she didn't spit out the bottle, he kept force-feeding her more and more and more, filling her entire digestive system with the "miracle" chemical cleaner. By the time he'd emptied the entire jug into her, the six-inch-tall Rosey had swelled up to the size of a basketball, and could only roll back and forth on the counter while detergent seeped from her every orifice. Her cheeks were now so packed with liquid that they resembled a chipmunk's, and she could only lie there flailing and making little gurgling noises.

"BATH TIME, RETARDS!" roared Kevin, and slam dunked the detergent-filled Rosey right into the washing machine full of unsuspecting larvae.

_POP! SPLASH! _The swollen chu exploded as soon as she hit the central spinner, drenching the washing machine's occupants with a bubbly mixture of blood, OxiClean, and fatty pink meat scraps. The other Sonees and Roseys shrieked as slippery detergent splashed across their huge reptilian eyeballs, and quickly began weeping and scrubbing helplessly at their stinging eyes.

Relishing the cries of suffering ferals, Kevin began gathering up anything sharp and pointy he could find in the room…sewing needles, knives and scissors, straight razors, tacks, metal scraps, even shards of glass from a mirror he smashed on the wall. Dumping the entire jagged mess into the washing machine, he slammed the lid shut, cranked up the water temperature to the absolute hottest setting, set it to run for an hour and a half, and punched the **Start Cycle** button.

The Jerkop hurriedly searched the room for any lingering chus, then turned and headed for the door as the trapped Sonees and Roseys began their merry-go-round ride to hell. The lucky ones would bleed to death in a few minutes. The rest…well, he'd leave that for to the EHPF officers to discover when Chandler finally got around to sending police to investigate the carnage. Surely the retreating mercenaries and Sonichus must have informed him about what was going on by now…but then again, he didn't handle stressful situations that well, either.

Kevin didn't care. What he and his comrades were doing here was nothing short of glorious, and he didn't plan on stopping anytime soon. Stepping back into the hallway, he could see that the hobos had done a bang-up job of butchering every single Sonee and Rosey they could find. The cream-colored carpet was now stained a uniform dark red, and faint odors of greasy McDonald's food and CWC Cola mingled in the air with the heavy stench of blood and excrement. Kevin wasn't surprised at all, especially considering the little fuckers' egregiously unhealthy diets. No wonder they were all so fat and lethargic now. They'd been vicious killing machines down in the sewers, but several weeks of living like Chandler had softened them up into the perfect victims.

After the last of the larvae had been ripped apart and stomped to pieces by the rampaging hobos, Kevin retrieved his knife and helped Frank gather them, the rescued staff, and the other humans all together, and then led them up to the tenth floor, where Steve had instructed him to go. Beyond that lay the roof, and…well, Kevin didn't know what Al had in mind for an exit strategy.

It was strange, knowing that he'd soon be seeing his old room again. As Kevin climbed the stairs with Frank close behind him, waves of nostalgia struck him again and again, filling him with a mix of sadness and acceptance. His old life among CWCville's homeless had come to an end over a month ago, and now it was time to bury the past once and for all. It wasn't so bad. He still had Frank, and God willing, Carl and George and Missy June might still be alive as well.

"If the ol' fools 'ad a lick 'o sense, they'd already be runnin' fer their lives," grunted Frank, as if he'd read Kevin's thoughts. "If not, they're gonna owe us big time."

"Let's just hope they're all still alive," said Kevin, and opened the utility door to the tenth floor hallway. "If something happened to them, I swear I'm gonna…HOLY SHIT!"

_ZZZZAAAAAAPPPPPPP!_

Kevin was hurled backward right onto Frank as the heavy Thundershock blasted him off his feet. The old hobo cursed and dragged his Jerkop friend out of the way, then kicked the door shut before the Sonichu could electrocute anyone else.

"Goddamn Sparky!" Frank growled, and snatched Kevin's AK-47 from the strap on his back. "Come on, kid, shake it off!"

Every hair on Kevin's head, arms, and legs was standing on end. When he opened his mouth to cough, a puff of black smoke spilled out from his throat and nose. He couldn't move. Each and every one of his muscles seemed to be vibrating faster than humanly possible. Pain shot through him again and again, a deep, penetrating pain that seemed to fill every inch of his body with hot melted lead. He might as well have been fused to the floor. And his heart…where was his heartbeat?

"Oh, motherfu-" Kevin gasped as he realized his heart had stopped, and promptly fainted dead away. The last thing he heard before his vision went dark was Frank's panicked voice.

"Kid? Hey, kid! Kevin! KEVIN!"

It was quiet now, quieter than anything Kevin could have imagined. Borne aloft by some mysterious invisible energy, the Jerkop drifted along aimlessly, wandering here and there with no real direction whatsoever. Blue wisps of gaseous light floated past and dissipated at random, shedding a chaotic glow on the dying man and his surroundings.

Kevin really couldn't remember what had just happened, only the silence in his chest and the pain of the shock. There was no life flashing before his eyes and no light at the end of a tunnel, but simply a much darker place somewhere off in the void. Somehow, he knew it would take him to another place…perhaps another world entirely. The word "death" was strangely absent from his thoughts. If anything, he was curious as to what lay at the other side of the black.

_There'll be another time,_ a girl's voice resounded through his head. It took him a few seconds to recognize it as Allie's.

And suddenly, the silence broke.

"_That's it. That's it. Do it, ya shiteater. I'll kill ya an' all yer fuckin' little babies before ya…"_

_ZZZZZZZZAAAAAAAPPPPPPPP!_

"_GAAAAAHHHHHHH!" _Kevin inhaled violently as a second jolt of energy coursed through him, restarting his heartbeat and tearing him right out of the cold black silence. The near-death experience was immediately forgotten, replaced instead by a world that smelled of electrical discharge and burnt flesh. Something was pressing down hard on his chest…something that had rerouted the second Thundershock straight into his heart.

Through a haze of pain, Kevin saw the Sonichu and two more EHPF officers moving forward through a sea of their retarded offspring to finish him off. He'd somehow been transplanted right into the middle of the tenth floor hallway. Moving as if in a trance, he reached for his belt, snatched his pistol out of its holster, and immediately lined up a shot directly toward the nearest chu. But there was no time, and their cheekspots were already fully charged…

"GOO-GEEEEEEE!" "SONEEEEEE!" "WOSEEEEEY!" "WAAAAAHHHH!"

_CLANG! _A metal vent fell free of the ceiling, smacking one of the officers in his head on its way down. Suddenly there were Sonees and Roseys everywhere - dozens upon dozens of Sonees and Roseys - all hastily spilling out of the air ducts in a furry waterfall of fear and panic. Some of them smacked into the Sonichus and immediately fastened onto them as tightly as possible, crying and wailing for their illegitimate fathers to protect them from…

"GRRROWR!" Sugarplum Fury roared as she leaped through the open vent and sank her teeth into the foremost Sonichu's fused eyeball, ripping the entire left half of it out of its socket. The EHPF officer howled in blind agony and unleashed a retaliatory Thundershock, but the honey badger had already let him go and was now tearing huge chunks of flesh off of another chu's leg.

Gritting his teeth, Kevin took the shot. _BANG!_ The third Electric Hedgehog Pokémon suddenly found himself unable to breathe or even scream, due in part to the grievous hole that the Jerkop's bullet had torn through his lower jaw. Kevin put two more rounds into his spiked head just to be sure, then switched targets and emptied the rest of his clip into the eyeless Sonichu's torso.

"AAAAAGGHHHHH! NOOOOOO! GET OFF ME! GET…AAAAAIIIIEEEE!" squealed the last EHPF officer, firing off frantic Sparks as Sugar, who by now had climbed up his leg, gnawed open his crotch flap, and seized his retracted pickle in her teeth. Wrenching her head sideways, the honey badger ripped the entire organ off at the base and hurled it away with what seemed like a snarl of disgust, then scurried up the Sonichu's chest and tore out his throat with her sharp little claws. The uniformed Pokémon gurgled and choked, clutching his neck as a red stain began soaking into his white gloves. Satisfied, Sugar released her grip and dropped to the floor, then instantly whirled around and busied herself with chewing a Rosey's face off.

Stunned and smoking, Kevin dragged himself up off the floor as his hobo army surged past on either side. Now that the Sonichus were all dead or dying, there was nothing standing between them and their hated prey. They were only too happy to aid the berserk honey badger in her passionate quest for utter chaos and destruction.

"Frank?" he gasped.

The old hobo lay beside him, limp and silent and peaceful, with one hand resting on Kevin's chest. His eyes were closed, and in that moment, the young Jerkop knew that Frank's life had reached its end at last. With one last act of selfless generosity, he'd given Kevin a second chance.

Kevin knelt beside Frank's body for a long, long time, cradling the old man's head in his arms and crying silently as the last of the ferals screamed and died around him. He wanted to believe that Frank would suddenly wake up and that everything would be okay again, but this new, battle-hardened Kevin Shaw knew that it was useless to hope for impossible miracles.

No doubt Frank Douglas's death would be written off as collateral damage by the EHPF when they discovered his corpse there in the hall. He had no living family, and knowing the mayor's policies, the old man would most likely end up lying among so many others in a Feeding Day pile below the streets of the abandoned zone…a final insult to the man who'd suffered so much under Chandler and his soulless creations.

"Rrowr?" Sugarplum Fury trotted up to him with a tiny Sonee clutched in her jaws. The little chu was kicking and bawling and beating at her face with its armstubs, but to no avail. It was obvious she intended to dispatch it later. The honey badger curled up at his feet and stared at him expectantly, as if she was asking _You're really going to send him off like that?_

_No_, thought Kevin with a new steely determination, and rose to his feet. Hauling Frank's body upright, he retrieved his AK-47, slung one of the old man's arms over his shoulder, and limped off toward the stairs as Sugar and the hobos silently followed their leader up the last flight of stairs to the roof. Beneath them lay a ten-story-tall mass grave of Sonees and Roseys – the single largest chu cull in human history.

That was, until an hour later, when the Tomgirls and Red Devils blew up Soup Hotel #9.

**Soup Hotel #4, roof**

"Is that everyone?" yelled Al over the howling wind as Kevin and his army of Sonee and Rosey slayers filed out of the door and assembled by Steve. "Weiss! Did everyone make it out alive?"

"I'm pretty sure," replied Blanca, and stowed her UMP45. "Good God, Ledger, how many…"

"Thousands." The Legend's face may have been covered by his welder's mask, but any listeners could have easily detected the immense pride in his voice. "And that was just _one_ _hotel_."

"Fucking hell." Blanca sat cross-legged by the edge of the roof and stared out across the city, soaking in the sheer magnitude of what she'd helped the PVCC to accomplish. "So now what?"

"Now?" Al patted her on the shoulder with a bloodstained, gloved hand. "Hold on to something."

**On the adjacent apartment roof**

"Is it just me, or does this totally sound like the ending of _Fight Club_?" asked Kacey Devoria as she drew a remote detonator from her backpack and began flipping switches to arm the explosives it was linked to. "You know, a guy and a girl standing together in an apartment, blowing up buildings to make a difference?"

"I never thought of that," replied Liquid Chris, and took her hand. "You sure the charges are still good? I mean, we're only going to get one shot at this, and you set them back in February…"

"Trust me." Kacey smiled at her boyfriend and began singing softly as she pressed the big red button on the detonator. "With your feet in the air…and your head on the ground…"

_Click!_

**Ten hours later, Slumberland, Honey Badger barracks**

"…_the support structure was subsequently damaged by a series of precise explosions on the base columns, which sent the entire Soup Hotel crashing into a nearby apartment. The terrorists and their prisoners were then able to safely cross from rooftop to rooftop, and subsequently escaped through the building before authorities could apprehend them,"_ the FQX news anchor Greta Squall's voice sounded from the TV. _"The hotel itself remains intact and accessible as of now, but the EHPF have cordoned off the area for investigation. What you are looking at is Ground Zero - just one of many similar and incredibly vicious mass slaughters of rehabilitated feral Sonees and Roseys, perpetrated by the renowned terrorist group PVCC, or the…"_

"PRIVATE VILLA OF CORRUPTED CITIZENS!" the Honey Badgers cheered together, filling their glasses with vodka as Al passed around a bottle from his treasured reserve.

"To every chu we killed!" yelled Kuri, and raised her glass. She'd garnished it with a sautéed Rosey eyeball instead of an olive.

"To every merc we killed!" added Nick. His machete now had a smaller twin – a large combat knife he'd stolen off the dead body of one of the loyalists in the Soup Hotel #4 cafeteria.

"For dead soldier comrades," Serge grunted as he took a long swig, then filled his own glass and passed the bottle to Kevin.

"To our fallen friends," said the young operative, and poured out the remaining vodka for himself and Allie. They clinked their glasses together and downed the fiery liquid instantly.

"To those who couldn't be there due to _someone_ sending us home," growled Matt, and shot a cold glance at Al and Steve, both of whom were now embroiled in a heated drunken argument over the slow progression of the Legend's field guide. "I'm seriously thinking about quitting this whole driving job. You guys could've at least saved a few for me and Jexis."

"Tell that to Smurfette," muttered Amanda darkly, and glared at Kuri. "I'll be hearin' that popping sound for days. I swear, that girl's got some _serious_ issues…"

Of his own volition, Kevin draped an arm over Allie's shoulders and leaned back to watch the rest of the news. Now Greta Squall was talking about an announcement by the mayor or something, and soon Chandler's flabby, absolutely furious face appeared on the screen. It was one of his homemade videos, and judging by what had gone down today, everyone in the PVCC would most likely soon find themselves on the receiving end of another pitiful threat-heavy rant.

"_Captain's Log, Stardate...WHY THA FUCK DID Y'ALL DO DIS TA ME?"_ screamed Chandler in a high-pitched, strangled shriek, curling his hand into a claw in a pathetic gesture of rage. _"Dose were just…dey were all INNOCENT WIDDLE BAY-BEES! WHAT THA FUCK? The Sonees and Roseys are all my TRUE and ORIGINAL creations, you PEDOFORKS! I gave dem nice big homes to play in, an' lots of food an' toys, an' y'all went an'…y'all MURDERED dem ta DEATH! Dey weren't hurtin' anyone! I DEMAND dat every JERK who ever even thought…uh…I want all tha JERKS an' TROLLS in tha PVCC ta know dat dis SLANDER will NOT be tolerated by me, Christian Weston Chandler, your own ELECTED MAYOR!"_

He sighed and promptly switched the topic of the announcement back to himself, rather than even saying a single word to commemorate the nearly thirty-five thousand Sonees and Roseys who had died that day at the hands of the Jerkops. Even the deaths of his most precious creations took second tier to his own self-centered complaints._ "My heart level has been SHATTERED because of you, an' y'all should be ashamed of yours…y'all need ta give tha other Sonees and Roseys more Fuzzy-Wuzzies, not Prickly-Wicklies! Dey're just…uh, learnin' ta be good widdle bay-bees, an'…an' you're makin' it HARD for dem! You're givin' em too much STRESS!"_

Chris let out another massive sigh and removed his glasses. It was more than obvious that he himself was undergoing a massive load of stress as well, and was now attempting to garner pity from the very same people he'd sworn to destroy multiple times. It wasn't working, but as always, he'd keep going regardless of his announcement's ever-increasing ridiculousness.

"_So…uh…STOP TRYIN' TA KILL THA CUTE WIDDLE BAY-BEES AN' RUIN DERE CHILDHOODS! Roseys are s'posed ta always get tha awe of dere enemies with dere cuteness, an' Sonees are s'posed ta have a lot of spunk an' speed an' pack a lot of action!"_ he yelled, as if repeating the same things over and over would somehow dissuade the Jerkops from their duty and turn his hideous abominations into adorable, cuddly, playful little creatures. _"So STOP IT an' leave 'em ALONE! Everyone else, have a good day, an' stay STRAIGHT. Peace."_

Kevin felt Allie snuggle up beside him as he began drifting off to sleep right there on the sofa. Peaceful thoughts filled his head, interspersed with memories of Frank and glorious images of the massacre he'd helped cause that day. It didn't matter that the old man was gone. Frank had died on his own terms, giving his life to save Kevin's in one final "fuck you" to Chandler.

Outside, a cool night breeze stirred Sugarplum Fury from her slumber. Happy, full, and content, the honey badger licked her chops and rolled over to find a better sleeping position. The remains of her supper lay scattered everywhere, marking the place where she'd torn her captured Sonee apart and devoured it bit by bit, all while the little chu was still alive. Behind her, just under the window to the Honey Badger barracks, stood a solitary gravestone with a small plaque that Kevin had carved himself in Al's workshop.

_**Frank Douglas**_

_**1933-2004**_

_**A friend to the end.**_


	11. Chapter 8: Mirror, Mirror

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 8: Mirror, Mirror**

**PVCC Call Log (encrypted)**

**Speakers: Mary Lee Walsh (MLW), Alec Benson Leary (ALB), and Evan Christopher George (ECG)**

**MLW:** Alec? Hello?

**ALB:** Hello, Mary? What can we do for you?

**MLW:** I'd appreciate an update on Project Asperchu, like we discussed in yesterday's meeting. But tell me the truth. No sugarcoating. _Will it work?_

**ALB:** The honest truth? Yes. But it won't be for a while. Evan's still ironing out the last traces of feral reversion from the one you caught for us. Why do you ask?

**MLW: **Well, all I want is to know…

**ALB:** It's Graduon, isn't it? What aren't you telling us, Mary?

**MLW:** Alec, you know I can't tell you. Not here. All you need to know is that he's got an agenda of his own, and if we're going to see this rebellion all the way to the end, we've got to play by his rules. Believe me, I know you're men of science, but this might be our best shot at taking Chandler out of the equation for a very, _very _long time.

**ALB:** I don't believe any of that in the slightest. I'll be honest, Mary, all this blood magic and ritual bullshit's starting to scare me. Are you sure you can't hold off on this whole Dark Mirror project for a while? At least until we know the event horizon's stable enough for human testing?

**MLW:** I'm sorry, but I can't control him.

**ALB:** Then we've just given up our authority to a ghost in a staff. (sigh) Evan, come here.

**ECG:** (picks up the phone) Hello? Who is this?

**ALB: **It's Walsh. She wants to know how you're doing with Simon.

**ECG: **Oh, okay. Well, the Sonee you caught seems to have imprinted onto me…the techs and I are actually getting along pretty well with the little guy. Say hi to Mary Lee Walsh, Simon!

**Simon Sonee:** Goo-goo!

**MLW:** It's healthy, though? What about the DNA synthesis?

**ECG:** Healthy, happy, and reverting to a homebred state. Mao and Sean are about 65% through the gene sequencing, and once that's done, we're going to try and clone a completely original Sonee and Rosey in the Asperpedia lab, then imprint them with elements like what we're doing with Simon and ground. We figured you'd know what to do once we evolve them.

**MLW:** I do. Agent McKenzie requested a fire-type Sonichu and a normal-type Rosechu. After that, start working on the new Combo and the Sonichu double, as well as your Asperchu, Alec. Don't worry about resources – just keep up the research and I'll take care of the paperwork. Our benefactors want to see _results_.

**ALB:** Benefactors?

**MLW:** You'll meet them soon. I promise. Ivo might have deep pockets, but his network of associates runs even deeper. If it means we'd get access to new weapons and robotic vehicles, I'd blow Chandler himself to keep the good doctor on our side.

**ECG: **That's a bit extreme, but I get the point. All right, I'm out of here. Simon's getting fussy.

**Simon Sonee: **WAAAAHHH!

**ALB:** I should go too. Thanks for calling, Mary.

**MLW:** Get back to me as soon as you have some results. Until then, I'll see you at the next meeting. Goodbye.

**(call ends)**

* * *

**May 5, 2004, CWCville slums, Slumberland, Honey Badger barracks**

"_Good morning and happy Cinco de Mayo, liberators of CWCville!" _crackled the radio set next to Kevin's cot as the clock struck 7:30 a.m. A trumpet reveille sound clip blared, rousing the Jerkop from his slumber. At least it was better than being rudely awakened by one of Jamsta Sonichu's desperately outdated slang barrages. _"Once again, I'm Patrick Ryan and this is your 7:30 wake-up call on R-PAT, Radio PVCC, All the Time. You're all probably still a little sleepy now, but don't worry. We've got an awesome playlist full of rock, metal, and action movie soundtracks lined up for all you Jerkops going into combat today, and let me tell you – I think I outdid myself again. But first, a few current events…"_

Kevin yawned and rubbed his eyes. Nick and Allie were just starting to stir as well. Matt was already up and getting dressed, as was Amanda. Kuri was snoring quietly and clutching a big plush Rosey that she normally used as either a "teddy chu" or a stress-relief punching bag. Still fairly sleepy, Kevin lay back and just let the news wash over him. The Honey Badgers obviously wouldn't get a mention on R-PAT, considering the most exciting thing they'd done last night was Matt punting a Sonee off of a fifteen-story apartment and into a bin full of scrap metal.

"…_which turned into a multiple-car pileup when the operatives managed to push both pursuing EHPF cruisers into the path of an oncoming eighteen-wheeler,"_ continued Ryan. There was a faint shuffling of papers. _That's it for the Wilderness area. As for the others, the admins haven't released too much information to me yet. Hopefully we'll have more on this as the day goes by. Stay tuned. Now before we get you started with some Metallica and the Rolling Stones, here's your daily update on the Soup Hotel massacres. That's right, folks. It's time for RIFTWATCH!"_

A few seconds of "Raining Blood" blasted out of the speakers, interspersed with sound effects of gunfire, crackling flames, and the screaming of Sonees and Roseys. Kevin smiled. This was always everyone's favorite part – listening to what the loyalists had to deal with in terms of aftermath from the greatest chu slaughter of all time. So far, the reports had been _immensely_ entertaining.

"_You probably remember my interview yesterday with Joshua Martinez – he's the leader of the Los Chupacabras squad out of Hogwash – where we talked about his personal favorite moments of Operation Rift. Well sadly, we don't have any Jerkops in the studio today, but…get this, I watched a bit of FQX News last night, and it looks like they finally got Soup Hotel #4 back upright. Remember, a few Slumberland squads took out the supports and crashed it into another building to escape. They put this…they sent a camera crew in with the Sparker investigators, and when they opened up the first hallway, the fires were still going. And holy hell, talk about a satisfying payoff. I've got a TV on in here with the footage running…I still can't believe it, THIRTY-FIVE THOUSAND. And that's a conservative estimate. See, I saw these rooms where they must've thrown grenades in or something, because the walls and floor and ceiling were completely red. Good stuff. It's pretty much the same old same old across town, investigations, body counts, carting whole truckloads of dead baby chus out of the hotels, et cetera. We'll keep you posted if Chandler makes another rant. I sure hope so…that last one was a riot."_

"Morning," grunted Matt as he stood up from his cot and grabbed his toothbrush. "I'll be in the lockers if anyone wants me."

"Me too. I'm gonna hit the shower," added Amanda, and left the room with Matt.

Kevin turned to Allie and Nick. "Who's waking up Kuri? I'm not doing it two days in a row."

"Rock, paper, scissors?" Allie suggested.

"Nah." Nick rummaged around in his pocket and retrieved a C-Quarter. "Call it."

"Tails."

Kevin left his two squadmates to their horrific task and headed through the door to the main barracks. Steve was lounging on the sofa as usual, scribbling something into a notebook and munching on a cold slice of pizza from the Honey Badgers' mini-fridge. He looked up and nodded a quick hello to Kevin, then resumed writing.

The morning progressed as usual, with the added bonus of real scrambled eggs and bacon for breakfast, courtesy of the Cashiers and their now-legendary escape from a Soup Hotel using a fully-stocked CWCuisine delivery truck. Al hadn't lined up any early patrols, so Kevin and Matt used most of their free time in the training yard with Zoey, practicing multi-squad combat maneuvers alongside a few ALBinos and Red Devils. That was one of the great things about being a Jerkop – the job was seldom boring, and there was always room for improvement. Even though Kevin now had three Sonichu kills to his name, the number was inconsequential. Anyway, two of those had only been possible because of Sugarplum Fury.

Around 11:30, the three tired and sweaty operatives headed to the shower room for a quick rinse, then arrived back in the barracks just in time for Steve to brief them on the day's operation.

"Okay, this might sound a bit unusual for us," the Jerkop squad leader explained once everyone had assembled, "but we're off patrol duty for today. It's not a day off…Al's been in touch with Walsh about another special assignment."

"No. No more catching babies," insisted Jexis bluntly.

"Don't interrupt, Cadet," Zoey admonished her.

"It's okay, Zo. According to Al, Walsh doesn't need any more live specimens, thanks to us." Steve glanced at his notebook. "Anyway, the admins are going to be conducting some sort of secret weapons test on both larval and adult chus. We're coming along as their escort, and they also want us to…set a trap for the EHPF with live Sonees and Roseys."

Jexis slumped back in her chair and let out a huge sigh. "I knew it. Here we go again."

"It's not what you think," Steve said defensively. "No sewer hunting or anything. We just pop open a manhole somewhere in the abandoned zone, lower down a trap with some candy inside, wait for a few ferals to get stuck, then lift it back up. Easy."

"Why didn't we just do that _before_?" the medic groaned. Clearly, she was still quite traumatized from her near-death experience from that night when they'd faced off with Angelica and a horde of starving ferals.

"Because there was an entire blockade around the abandoned zone." answered Nick with a frown. "And now it's gone, right?"

Steve nodded. "Right. After we just up and annihilated 75% of the feral population in one day, that blockade's ancient history. Even Chandler isn't stupid enough to keep relocating his 'pwecious widdle bay-bees.' Good news for us, anyway. Means the abandoned zone's open for Sonee and Rosey hunting season again."

"Goody goody," whispered Kuri with a wicked gleam in her eyes.

"Pack your gear and load up," continued Steve, and smiled. "We're going feral fishing."

* * *

**Three hours later, CWCville abandoned zone**

"Anything yet?" Kevin asked, squinting up through the bright early afternoon sunlight toward the tops of the desolate apartments that dotted the abandoned zone.

Jexis shook her head and gave her trap rope a few tugs. "I'm starting to wish you guys hadn't gone and killed them all. Now they're gonna be too scared to even go hunting in the sewers."

Kevin sighed. "Look, it's not our fault you got hurt. Anyway, there's always going to be more."

"Wish that were true here," muttered the teenage medic. "Come on! I sent down _Twinkies_, for crying out loud!"

"Maybe they're not in the mood for cream filling."

"The hell they aren't. You ever see a Sonee fire an entire can of whipped cream into its mouth?"

"Heh." Kevin chuckled, remembering his special OxiClean experiment back in the Soup Hotel. "I can think of a few other things I'd like to feed them. Hey, maybe we should make Kuri a fried jelly-filled Rosey for her birthday."

"That's not until October. By then, we'll probably be lucky to even find a single feral around this place. Of course…chu gestation periods last about three months, and since we just dropped a hammer on almost 40,000 of their babies, I'd be shocked if every Rosechu in the city wasn't already flat on her back getting pounded up the…"

_Ding ding ding ding ding!_

"All right!" yelled Kevin as the bell attached to their lure began ringing violently. "Catch of the day! Come on, reel 'em in! Reel 'em in!"

"What the hell are _you_ in such a hurry about?" asked Jexis patiently. "They're not going anywhere. Don't you know how lobster traps work?"

The two Jerkops waited another minute, then began hauling up the rope and its significantly heavier cargo. Foot by foot, they lifted the trap higher and higher, until Kevin at last heard a wooden _thunk_ and several surprised "goo-goo"s. With a mighty heave, he and Jexis finally pulled the entire 100-pound cage right out of the sewers and onto the deserted street.

"Jackpot!" shouted the medic, kneeling to inspect the two Sonees and three Roseys they'd just captured. The larval chus drew away from her fearfully, but in such a compact container, there wasn't too much room for them to retreat. All they could do was whine and paw at the bars.

"Think that'll be enough?" asked Kevin as Jexis poked a Rosey in her malnourished little belly.

"It should be. A couple of hours without food and they'll be bawling at the top of their lungs." Jexis grabbed one side of the cage and waited for Kevin to get the other. "Come on, let's get this back to the admins before that happens. One…two…three, LIFT!"

* * *

**Abandoned zone, Dark Mirror testing ground**

"Pair of nines," Al muttered, and placed his cards down for his fellow poker enthusiasts to see. "Someone had better beat that or I'm gonna break something."

"Sorry dude. Pair of threes." Sean August Watley threw down his hand and took another deep draw from his joint. "Fuckin' _moonbeams_, man. Everywhere, you know? Just gonna watch Allison Amber fuck that flag and then I'm gonna kill Seth MacFarlane…"

"Okay, enough moon talk, Sean," insisted Mao Ling, and grabbed the marijuana before Sean could enter another 15-minute coma like he'd done three times already that day. "Any day now, Mr. Hill."

Jimmy Hill grinned and revealed a full house. "Hand it all over, chaps,"

"Fucking…_finally_¸" slurred Sean as he and Al pushed their spent chips across the table to the smiling British man. "Mao, come on, dude! Give it!"

Mao gave him a sour look, then stole a few puffs before handing back Sean's joint. "Ledger, you want to deal this one?"

"What I _want_¸" Al said between sips of whiskey, "is to get a goddamn move on with whatever it is you guys and Walsh are doing here. 'Course, that's not gonna happen until my squad gets back, for some reason."

"If we knew, Mr. Ledger, Sean would have told you by now," answered Hill, and continued arranging his newly-acquired chips into neat stacks. "Marijuana, I've been told, is an excellent tongue-loosener."

"So's this." The Legend tapped the rim of his glass, producing a melodic _ding_. He was about to pour himself another measure of Jack Daniels when a high-pitched scream and an angry shout shattered the calm.

"WAAAAAH! SONEEEEEE!"

"LEDGER!"

"Damn it all to hell," Al sighed and rolled his eyes as he pushed back the chair and rose to his feet, glass in hand. "Go ahead. Start without me."

Located on the top floor of an abandoned warehouse, the observation room for the PVCC's impromptu testing site held a perfect view of a large gravel parking lot, where the experiment was to take place once the rest of his Honey Badgers returned with their prisoners. Al made his way up the metal stairway past Jerkop guards from Wilderness and Hogwash, several of Leary's scientists, and a few men and women in civilian clothes. It seemed as though Walsh, Howell, and the rest of the administrators were pulling out all the stops for this experiment. Being the Jerkop squad commander in charge of helping to conduct the weapons test, Ledger had been granted full access to speak with Mary Lee Walsh, who was overseeing this experiment.

So far, she hadn't been saying very much about _what_ exactly so many admins and security personnel were doing there.

Al flashed his badge at the two guards waiting outside the observation room, who nodded and opened the door for him. Inside were four more Jerkops from Wilderness, the two Asperpedia scientists Alec Benson Leary and Evan Christopher George, Vivian Gee, and Mary Lee Walsh herself with Count Graduon slung across her back in his staff. Oddly enough, Evan was clutching a live and very terrified Sonee in his arms.

"Sugar, come here," commanded the Legend. The honey badger promptly leapt out from her hiding place beneath a desk and obediently trotted across the room to her master, then curled up at his feet. Al gave her a few pats on the head, then glanced up at the gathered administrators. "Let me guess…"

"You should have sent her along with your squad, Ledger," replied Leary sternly, though the expression on his face showed that he clearly held no concern for the weeping Sonee's mental state. "We can't afford to risk the loss of a high-value asset just because your pet's hungry."

"If I may say so, sir," Al explained as he picked up Sugarplum Fury, "hunting ferals is simply her nature. What exactly happened?"

"What happened?" Evan's voice had taken on the tone of a shocked and angered parent. "That little wolverine got in through the ventilation system and almost tore Simon's head off!" He glared at Mary Lee Walsh. "You told me this place was secure!"

"Perhaps, Evan, it would be better for you to _not_ let…Simon…wander around on his own so much," suggested Walsh. "Especially if he's turning homebred, as you say. Pretty soon he'll be just as helpless as the rest of them…that is, _more_ helpless." She snickered and beckoned to Al. "Ledger, if I were you, I'd keep her leashed for now. As for the status of your operatives…"

"We haven't had any reports of incidents or captures yet," reported the Jerkop commander. "My squad followed the luring procedures precisely – the ferals just seem to be growing more and more cautious. And if you don't mind me saying, they have a damn good reason to be."

"Pity they're not as stupid or as gullible as homebreds," muttered Walsh, and tapped the side of her horned hairband. "They've got instinct, I'll give them that. But we've got _candy_. They'll bite, mark my words. We'll just have to wait and see what happens."

"And they'd better be alive," added Leary with a frown. "And screaming."

"May I be excused?" Al looked down at Sugar, who was now nuzzling his chest. "That is, unless you want to tell me the reason why you need live larvae."

"Dismissed," Walsh said bluntly. "Keep us posted, Ledger."

The Legend saluted and turned to leave the room, radiating frustration and disappointment from every pore. He was accustomed to being kept in the dark about secret missions – he'd served in the military, after all – but it still didn't feel right to have so much information withheld by a mere…_teacher_. Al gritted his teeth and swirled the last few dregs of whiskey around in his glass as he tucked Sugar under one arm and stepped out the door, past the guards. He had nothing against Mary Lee Walsh…in fact, he admired her and respected her as a commander in these dark times. But the soldier inside him still questioned her authority at times.

Now Matthew Devoria…_that_ was a man he would follow to hell and back. And compared to the CWCville revolution, Desert Storm had only been the gates. At least Al was serving alongside Devoria's daughter in this particular fight – following a promise both men had made in Iraq when Kacey was just a little girl. The last Al had ever heard of his old sergeant was a letter notifying him that Devoria had risen to the rank of captain and that he was invited to celebrate the promotion.

But that had been all the way back in 1998, before the world ended. Now Kacey was all grown up and intent on marrying Liquid, but her father still hadn't come to CWCville to give the couple his blessing.

"Where the hell are you, Sarge?" he muttered to himself distractedly.

His walkie-talkie hissed.

"_Al, it's Steve. We got 'em. Come back, over."_

Ledger snapped out of his thoughts and turned up the receiver's volume so he could hear Morrison's voice over the sounds of PVCC staff and security chatting to each other. "Didn't copy. Repeat your last, over."

"_Kevin and Jexis just hauled up a crate full of five…I mean, uh, four ferals. Two Sonees, two Roseys. We're in the truck and headed back, over."_

"Copy." The Legend smiled. "Hurry back so we can get this show on the road. Out."

"Rrrrrowr." Sugar immediately perked up at the words "Sonees" and "Roseys". She licked Al's hand and looked up at him with anticipation in her beady black eyes.

"Right you are, you stripy little berserker you," murmured Al. "And the sooner we get this done, the sooner you can break all those ferals dead."

* * *

**Abandoned zone, streets**

"WOSEEEEEEEEY! AGH! UGH! WOE! AAAUUUGHH! WOSE! GAAH! WOSEEEUGH!"

"Corner! Corner!" yelled Kevin, nearly choking with laughter as Matt spun the pickup truck back and forth, sending the Honey Badgers careening from side to side. "Take her around!"

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

_SCREEEEECH!_ The Jerkops braced themselves against the sides just before the vehicle swerved violently to the right, launching the bound, bruised, bloody, and skirtless Rosey a full four feet up into the air as it struck a pothole and bounced. Not missing a beat, Matt immediately stepped on the gas as the feral hit the street, then began swerving back and forth so it struck as many cracks and bumps as possible.

Remarkably, the idea for this new form of entertainment had been Kevin's – a first for the young Jerkop. Steve or Kuri usually thought up the crazier kills and torture methods, so it came as a pleasant surprise to everyone when Kevin suggested they tie one of the Roseys to the back of the truck and drag her through the streets all the way to the staging area.

_Best idea EVER,_ thought Kevin as the Rosey's bloody mouth quickly filled up with dirt and gravel again. One of her armstubs had been worn down to the bone, and a few of her ribs were showing through her belly fur. Her tail was gone, sliced off by a sharp chunk of glass, her ears were in tatters, and one of her hideous green eyes – the victim of a rather pointy stick - now sat deflated and leaking inside its socket.

"WUGGGGHHH! WUUUGHGGHGH!" screamed the feral through a mouthful of debris. Kuri leaned over the back hatch and chucked a rock at it, but missed as Matt swerved again and smacked the Rosey against the gutter, snapping its left armstub backwards at an angle that even _it_ wasn't supposed to bend. Droplets of blood spattered the street, prompting a fresh wave of cheers and laughter from the Jerkops.

Under normal circumstances, Kevin might have felt a bit sorry for Steve, Allie, Nick, and the Jerkops in the second truck with the feral cage, but then again, he was having too much fun to even care about the fact that they were missing out on one of the funniest uses for a Rosey that anyone had ever tried before.

"Why hasn't her neck snapped yet?" Zoey yelled to Jexis.

"They don't _have_ necks!" replied the medic, pointing out the missing feature as the little chu flipped over and began losing her back spikes against the pavement. "You see where her head's fused to her shoulders? There's vertebrae in there, but they won't break unless she hits her spine really hard! There's too much fat protecting it! It's like a natural airbag!"

"Good!" shouted Kuri. She was laughing so much that tear streaks were beginning to appear on her painted face. "So she won't die for a while, right, Millie?"

"Exactly!" Jexis sidestepped any mention of Kuri's peculiar family-oriented PTSD and instead focused on watching the bouncing and bloody Rosey with immense satisfaction.

A few more minutes of hilarity passed before Matt finally pulled off the road and followed the other truck into a large gravel parking lot next to a warehouse. Jexis was given the honor of finally dispatching the now semi-conscious feral, and chose a rather creative execution method of exsanguinating its little body with a needle while Steve and the other Jerkops helped unload the caged Sonees and Roseys from the truck. By the time they were done, the medic had grown bored with drawing out the Rosey's blood and was now jabbing the needle deep into its one working eyeball again and again.

Kevin had a feeling this was going to go on for at least another five minutes. Jexis had missed out on the Soup Hotel exterminations, and wasn't about to let her compensation victim escape with a quick death.

_Never underestimate the power of teenagers,_ the Jerkop reminded himself as he fastened a small chain around a Sonee's stumpfoot and attached the other end to a ring set into a weighted metal block buried beneath the gravel. The feral chu whined and tried to kick him as he set it down, but of course failed miserably.

"Do they care when we make them start crying?" he asked Zoey as she and Allie secured one of the Roseys next to him.

Both women shook their heads.

"Fantastic. Got your nose!" laughed Kevin, and grabbed the Sonee by its little black snout. With a single pinch, he ripped the entire thing right off, leaving only a ragged squirting hole in the middle of the chu's face.

"WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! AAAAAAUUUUGHHHHH!"

Kevin sat back and began playing with the piece of cartilage as the now-noseless feral pawed at its mutilated face and screamed in horror, trying to locate the source of its pain. Kevin placed the little black blob on his thumb and flicked it right into the Sonee's open mouth, force-feeding it its own nose.

"God DAMN!" yelled Matt in a mixture of shock and admiration. "You haven't been hanging out with Kuri lately, have you?"

"Nope. Think I should start?"

"Probably not. She might start thinking of you as competition."

"_Who's_ competition?" asked Kuri indignantly as she plucked out her Sonee's eyeballs one by one with a gloved hand and replaced them with two large rocks while the blinded chu screeched and bawled at the top of its lungs, upset by the horrible pain and this new heavy feeling in its head.

Both Kevin and Matt promptly shut up and went back to work.

* * *

**Observation room**

"Looks like we just got our bait," commented Vivian Gee as she paced back and forth in front of the cracked window with a PDA in her hands. "And here's a little more good news – there's a few cruisers heading through our sector. They should be able to see the lure if we pull this off."

"Let's hope they're paying attention," muttered Mary Lee Walsh, and drew Graduon. "Count, we're putting a lot of faith in this operation. It had better work, or we…"

"_Or what, Slaweel?"_ the spirit replied in her head. _"I control the Dark Mirror as easily as you control your little Jerkops. If you hold up your end of the bargain, there is no need to worry."_

_Wrong,_ Walsh thought to herself. _There's always a need to worry._

Graduon pulsed briefly as if he'd sensed her doubt, then went silent again. Outside in the staging area, the Jerkops were falling back to a safe distance as overwatch, having successfully secured their captured ferals. Above the _whirr_ of the building's air conditioning, Walsh could hear faint screams of pain from the middle of the parking lot. Evan quickly covered Simon's ears, but the little Sonee was too busy munching on an armstub-load of Oreos to even care about what kind of horrible torment his fellow ferals were going through down there.

"Yes?" Vivian placed a hand on her headset to steady it. "Go ahead." She listened briefly, then turned to her commander. "We're good. The Honey Badgers are in place, snipers are standing by on backup, and the table's set."

Walsh smiled. "Fire."

* * *

**Outside**

Kevin wiped a few beads of sweat from his forehead and rolled up his sleeves to vent some of the stifling heat that was currently baking him inside his combat jacket. He didn't have the slightest idea how someone like Steve could even stand it while wearing his customary white PVCC sweatshirt. Yet Morrison sat beside him with a sharpening stone and his kukri in hand, listening to R-PAT on his iPod radio as he worked on giving the curved knife an even sharper edge. Sugarplum Fury lay curled up at his feet, gnawing on an entire armstub from the Rosey that Jexis had killed.

Well, seeing as how his squad leader was preoccupied, at least Kevin still had Amanda to talk to.

"You didn't happen to see the menu for tonight, did you?" he asked, edging over towards the Jerkop and leaning further into the meager shade to escape the burning sunlight. The big gravel pile protected them from view well enough, but it didn't have much in the way of sun protection.

Amanda glanced at him disappointedly. "Probably a bunch of reheated beans and canned tuna again. Goddamn, I could go for some onion rings right now."

"Yeah, me too," Kevin replied with a chuckle. "But if we're comparing sides, nothing beats waffle fries."

"Okay, stop. Hold it. We start talkin' about food, I'm gonna…"

_FWOOSH!_

The three Jerkops whirled around so fast that Steve accidentally yanked his iPod earbuds right out in surprise. The sound had come from the warehouse, but Kevin couldn't see anything except a tiny speck of light climbing higher and higher into the air, until…

_CRACK! SSSSSSSSS!_ The light exploded into a blast of red fire as the emergency flare activated over the city and began slowly drifting down, flashing like a beacon and extremely visible, even in broad daylight. Anyone within a few blocks with their eyes on the sky would have noticed the signal.

"There goes our invitation," muttered Steve as he sheathed his kukri and reached for the P90 on his back. "Hunker down and get ready. Odds are, we've got a few guests coming to this party."

Kevin snatched up his AK-47 and made sure that his adjustable iron sights were still set correctly. Amanda simply unslung her grenade launcher and snapped the breach shut. She'd already loaded it, and had another high explosive round standing by in case the EHPF decided to go snooping around the place before Walsh could test this new weapon of hers.

Sure enough, the first sirens reached his ears a mere twenty seconds later.

"_Team One checking in,"_ Al's voice growled over the radio.

"Team Two, checking in," replied Steve.

"_Team Three, burning to death out here,"_ added Zoey from across the parking lot.

"_Remember, hold your fire until I give the order,"_ instructed Al. _"Now you all know I'd usually say a few motivational words at a time like this, but I'm going to level with you – I have no idea what's going on. Just focus on the Sparkers and we'll get through this in one piece."_

"Watch your crossfire and keep the safeties on until they get out of their cruisers," said Steve as he brushed away a layer of gravel and shifted his position to a more comfortable firing stance. "Eyes on the road. Here they come."

Two EHPF cruisers roared into the parking lot, skidding across the gravel towards the four fuzzy blobs chained to the bait block. Unbeknownst to the chus inside, the trap was already sealed the moment they left the safety of the street. Another buried mechanism quickly pushed a hidden row of tire spikes up from beneath the gravel, blocking any retreats out the way they had come. Coupled with the fact that the cars were heading right for a solid triangle of fire from the three Honey Badger teams, it was hard to imagine any of the loyalist officers escaping without at least twenty bullet wounds each.

Of course, that was assuming they didn't fall victim to Walsh's secret weapon first.

The cruisers screeched to a halt next to the wounded larvae and immediately killed their sirens. As the doors opened, Kevin was shocked to see a pair of Rosechus accompanying the group of six EHPF Sonichus. _Guess they brought some china along for the ride._

"Watch the perimeter," ordered one of the officers, most likely a sergeant. "You two, follow me. Ladies, y'all stay back and don't ya do anything."

"Tee hee! Okay!"

Kevin winced at the Rosechu's airheaded giggle. As if he needed yet another temptation to open fire. Steve appeared to be suffering a similar problem, but he kept his P90 trained on the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon all the same. The three EHPF officers stepped right up to the trap, their mouths hanging open in shock at the state of the four crying ferals before them. Upon noticing the presence of adult chus, the noseless Sonee and the two Roseys let out squeals of pained relief, and began waddling forward until they reached the ends of their chains. The blind Sonee merely wandered around, in search of these new strange noises.

"Holy GodBear," gasped one of the officers. "Sergeant, does this mean they're…"

"They already killed everything in the Soup Hotels!" shouted the other Sonichu in a fit of tard rage. "Why the f*** can't those JERKS just leave our babies alone?! They didn't do anything!"

Amanda groaned. "Steve, if you just let me take _one_ shot…"

"No. Just _no_."

"Get 'em out of here and put 'em in the car," commanded the EHPF sergeant. "Be gentle. We've gotta get the little babies to the…"

_eeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE E_

_BOOM!_ The chus scattered and dove for cover as a large fireball erupted from the parking lot, punching a deep crater into the gravel. One of the cruisers was caught in the blast and flipped over, unfortunately missing both of the screaming Rosechus. Above, Mary Lee Walsh descended on her hoverboard, wielding both her trident and Graduon.

"Hold," Steve whispered, and clicked off his safety. "Al, you watching this?"

"_About damn time,"_ replied the Legend. _"Everyone, safeties off. Except you, Sugar."_

The honey badger sniffed in disappointment and shook her head back and forth. Across the parking lot, the six EHPF officers had regrouped around the trap, surrounding the wailing larvae and the helpless, useless Rosechus in a wall of yellow bodies. All of them were glaring up at the hovering PVCC commander with a form of overly righteous but misguided rage that could have only come from the mind of a socially inept manchild who couldn't recognize legitimate help from a concerned school administrator if it had walked up and slapped him in the face.

Kevin had heard the stories. He knew Mary Lee Walsh had kicked Chandler out of college for making unwanted advances towards young women, and that the teenage mayor-to-be had never fully recovered. It was only natural that his genetically-engineered creations held the same ludicrous grudge against Walsh that he did.

"Mary Lee Walsh!" yelled a Sonichu. "Put your weapons down and surrender! We have you surrounded!"

Walsh scratched her head in puzzlement. "What? No…you don't. Look." She pointed her trident at the group, then at herself. "I'm up here. You're down there. The only thing you've surrounded are your whores and your bastard children."

The Rosechus gasped.

"WHORES?" one of them shrieked. "Why, you ugly old witch! Come down here and I'll show you what a whore _really _is."

The blond woman sighed. "Again with the witch bullshit. Does Chandler really draw me with grey hair?"

"That's…you're just wearing a _helmet_!" insisted another Sonichu stubbornly, unable to accept the truth even though it was literally hovering a good ten yards away from him. "Yeah! Your hair's all grey and bunched up underneath a gold helmet, like in the Mayor's comic!"

Walsh tossed her hair indignantly and rolled her eyes. "Put them out of their misery, Count. I can't stand this idiocy anymore."

"_As you wish,"_ a sinister voice chuckled inside Kevin's head. The young Jerkop shuddered, remembering the last time he'd heard Graduon speaking to his mind.

"Do…did anyone else just hear that?" he asked. Steve shot him a puzzled look and mouthed _What?_ Kevin glanced at Amanda, but she was too busy staring up at the hovering PVCC commander to discuss magical talking scepters at the moment.

A fierce purple light shone across Mary Lee Walsh's eyes, reflecting the blinding glow emanating from Graduon's orb. Kevin felt something like a jolt of lightning crackle down his arms and across the back of his neck. Tiny bolts of purple electricity were leaping from the tips of his fingers to the grip of his AK, lashing and striking again and again.

_This isn't right,_ he thought frantically as Steve's walkie-talkie crackled on of its own accord. Suddenly the air filled with voices, panicked voices, voices he couldn't even recognize, all shouting together as their words flooded out of the overloading receiver.

"…_we got dark energy spikes all over the place! What the hell's going on out there?"_

"_Goddamn it, they're inside the field! Get me Ledger's frequency! I'm pulling them out!"_

"_Start up the dispersal units! We're heading for an overload! I said get the…"_

"_NO! SHUT IT DOWN! WALSH! WALSH, YOU HAVE TO…"_

_ZZZZZZAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPPP!_

A massive lance of violet energy arced down from Graduon and struck the huddled, terrified group of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, disintegrating them in less time than it took for Kevin to blink. He didn't see them fly apart or burn to ash or anything…just a single blink, and the chus were gone.

But now there was something else…a jagged rift, floating unaided in the air like a bottomless chasm made of pure darkness. The gravel began to rise, one stone at a time, until Kevin, Steve, and Amanda were surrounded by levitating rocks. Purple flames surrounded the opening, and as he stared into it, Kevin could feel some indescribable force pushing him towards it. He saw nothing but a reflection – a terrible reflection of himself, twisted and perfect and hideous and beautiful all at once. He felt as though he was being torn in half. One half wanted to flee, the other wanted to step through and see what was on the other side of this ethereal mirror.

Before he could make up his mind, the rift did it for him. With a high-pitched crackle, a purple bolt speared Kevin in the chest and arced into his forehead, filling him with a surge of indescribable energy. Fire lashed across his vision, but he didn't feel any burning. His skin was wreathed in shimmering violet light, warping and diffusing like liquid glass.

All around him, the world melted away into black. The last sound he heard before the silence reigned was Walsh's scream of helpless fury and Graduon's sinister laughter ringing in his mind.

And then…no more.

* * *

**?**

Blackened husks of steel and concrete towered into the kaleidoscopic sky, stretching high above the sea of grey ash that covered the world from the city to the far horizons. Past the tops of the buildings and the rippling colors above, great shapes twisted slowly, chaotically, thrashing in the void with no discernible motivation or purpose. Every once in a while, some distant creature would let out an echoing shriek in what seemed like a thousand voices compressed into one, or a few balls of purple-blue fire would rain down from the twisted nebula-like atmosphere and impact on the ashes with a faint hiss and a loud crackle of some eldritch energy.

Whatever state this world had been in before the apparent catastrophe, its age of life and prosperity had passed long ago.

_So, this is how it ends,_ thought Steve Morrison as he gazed up at a curtain of orange and green fire spreading across the heavens like some otherworldly aurora. Half-buried in a massive ash pile a good three miles away from the edge of the city, the Jerkop squad leader kicked and struggled frantically, trying to free himself from his shifting prison. After about two minutes of blind digging, he managed to pull both legs free and fell forward, tumbling head over heels down the ash dune until he slammed into what felt like a large piece of broken concrete.

Steve groaned and rubbed his aching side. His white sweatshirt had turned completely grey from all the ashes, and judging by how his feet were feeling at the moment, there were at least three pounds of debris in each of his combat boots. It didn't bother him too much. If this was, in fact, hell, then he was just grateful to still have all his Jerkop gear and clothes intact. Too bad his radio was useless. There wasn't even a signal here…wherever this place was.

A deep, colossal roar echoed over the ash waste, and Steve instinctively reached for his revolver. Off in the distance, titanic shadowed beasts thundered across the plain one earthshaking step at a time. In the opposite direction lay the fallen city, but what awaited him in those dead streets was anyone's guess. Better than getting stomped into oblivion by whatever those migrating creatures were. Steve checked his ammo supply, made sure his kukri was still in its sheath, then set out for the city limits, shielding his eyes against hot gusts of ashen wind.

After what seemed like a few hours of walking, the Jerkop arrived at a large metallic structure with a good amount of dried blood splashed across its surface. Jagged spikes protruded from the top, upon which was impaled a partial human skeleton and an array of skulls. More desiccated bones lay piled on the ground beneath the structure, as well as a few pieces of some kind of heavy armor. Steve tried to pick up a large curved metal plate that he assumed was supposed to be strapped to one's shoulder, but it was far too heavy for even him to lift.

Abandoning the gruesome site, Steve kept walking over the dunes, stopping only to take a drink from his emergency canteen. Without water, he'd die of thirst in a few days, and his chances of finding it in the city couldn't be any worse than they were out here in this desolate wasteland.

_CRACK!_

Steve cursed loudly and reached for his P90 as an electrical discharge sounded from what seemed like only a few yards away. The air shimmered and seemed to peel apart like a curtain, revealing another yawning abyss like the one that had swallowed up him and his squad.

Piece by piece, an entity assembled in the air before him, floating above the churning ashes through some means unknown to the laws of physics. The thing was about the size of a man, and dressed like one too, with a blue long-sleeved shirt, grey pants, and light blue shoes. Each one of its clothes was stained in blood, but it appeared to be unharmed. Wherever it had come from, this thing had either been in one hell of a fight, or else had just come from a recent mass murder.

But its face and head…whatever they were, they made the Jerkop's skin prickle with absolute fear. The outline resembled a normal human head with strange spiky hair, but both the hair and its skin were completely black, as if it was made of shadows itself. From the void, a pair of huge red pupil-less eyes gazed out like a car's brake lights shining in the darkness.

"_Hey,"_ muttered the entity in Steve's voice. _"What the hell are you doing here?"_

"What?"

The rift sealed shut with another piercing crackle of electricity, taking the newcomer with it before Steve could even begin to wrap his head around what the hell had just happened.

"Steve! What the hell just happened?" yelled Zoey as she appeared seemingly out of nowhere, her AK-47 drawn and aimed directly toward the rapidly-disappearing energy storm.

"ZO!" yelled Steve, and waved furiously. Zoey shouldered the assault rifle and slid down the dune toward her squad leader, her face a mixture of confusion and relief.

"God _damn_ it, Steve! I thought everyone was dead!" she panted. Her combat jacket was tied around her waist by its sleeves, and her black tank top was soaked in sweat. She'd kept all of her gear as well, apparently. Maybe this place wasn't hell after all.

"You didn't see anyone else? Does your radio still work? Mine's out."

Zoey shook her head. "I tried to call you and Al, but all I got was static. Let me guess…you don't have _any_ idea where we are?"

"Nope. Looks like something pretty bad happened here, though. On the bright side, I always wondered what would happen if Salvador Dali and Hunter S. Thompson became Elder Gods."

"Really?"

"No." Steve glanced up at the chaotic sky and shook some ashes out of his hair. "Did you see that crazy guy with the black head and those big red eyes?"

"Wait, what?" Zoey looked puzzled. "What are you talking about? You were just talking to some girl with black hair and a p…" She felt the back of her own head and looked at her own ponytail with something resembling utter terror. "Oh, God. Steve, what's going on?"

"You tell me," muttered the Jerkop. "All I know is that you're the first Zoey I've seen here. And that's all I care about right now."

Zoey gave him a shaky hug, then drew back and checked her AK's barrel for ash buildup. "How much ammo you got?"

"Everything I took from Slumberland," Steve answered. "You?"

"Same. And I think we're going to need it in there." Zoey pointed to the looming black towers of the dead city. "I keep seeing movement in the corners of my eyes. Something's following me."

"Then it'll have to follow me too," said Steve. "And if Al and the others are out here too, we're going to find them. Now let's get in there and find some higher ground."

The two Honey Badgers set off toward the ruined city outskirts one by one, watching each other's back in case their mysterious pursuers decided to show themselves.

* * *

**?**

The first Thundershock came without warning, impacting against the wall with enough force to crack the frail concrete. Allie probably would have died instantly had Matt and Kevin not tackled her from behind to avoid the next salvo of bolts that tore open the building like a sardine can to reveal the Jerkops inside.

"GO!" yelled Matt, and shoved Allie forward while Kevin drew his pistol and rose to return fire. Another bolt nearly hit him right in the face, forcing the young Jerkop back behind cover as more spears of bioelectricity exploded across the walls and ceiling of the collapsing structure.

"Where the hell did they come from?!" he shouted frantically, shielding his head as small chunks of debris rained down from above. The lightning barrage was wreaking havoc on the building's supports, but Matt and Allie managed to grab him and pull him to safety inside a nearby stairwell. Thankfully, the steps were concrete instead of metal, and thus hadn't yet rusted away. With no idea where their attackers were, the shaken Jerkops could only wait and pray that the Sonichus would realize they were gone and stop firing before they took out the entire skyscraper.

Allie drew in a deep breath and clutched Kevin's shoulder in desperation. None of the three operatives even needed to say anything to each other. They all knew there was no possible way any one of them could come up with an explanation for where they were and how they'd ended up there. Whatever had gone wrong with the secret weapon test, it had transported the entire Honey Badger squad to somewhere very, _very_ far away from CWCville. And even worse, their intended test subjects had ended up here too.

"We should move up higher and get a better vantage point," suggested Matt. "We'll have more range from up there."

Kevin nodded and gritted his teeth as something huge and probably important fell off the building and took out what sounded like a few walls on its way down. "I'll go first."

One by one, the operatives made their way up the stairs as the stubborn Sonichus continued laying waste to the fragile building. The three of them had been fortunate enough to all emerge from the rift in a group, but the unfortunate part was the fact that the other Honey Badgers were nowhere in sight. Outgunned by an unknown number of hostile chus, their only chance for survival was to outmaneuver their enemies.

At the top of the stairs, Kevin stopped and scanned the room. If there had been a civilization here once, not much of it was left behind in the ash wastes. One of the walls was torn open, and through it she could see a few flashes of yellow fur and flying sparks.

"Got em," he growled. "Stay here and I'll check it out."

Matt and Allie nodded and sat down on the trembling steps. Kevin checked his footing and tiptoed to the edge, clutching the grip of his pistol as if he was strangling a feral chu. Beyond the crumbling hole in the wall lay that same horrific, barren cityscape – as if some great metropolis like New York City or Celadon City had been subjected to the fallout from a nuclear blast.

But all that the Jerkop was interested in were the three large yellow Sonichus and a single pink Rosechu standing in the adjacent skyscraper, along with two little pink blobs that could only have been the pair of bait Roseys. The male Electric Hedgehog Pokémon were too busy emptying their bioelectricity supply into the other building to notice him, but from this new vantage point, Kevin deduced that they must have been at least twenty stories above the ground. A large piece of twisted metal and concrete stretched between the collapsed wall beside her and the opposite structure, forming a bridge to the other side.

Readying his pistol, Kevin turned to wave over Allie and Matt. It was now or never. They had to take advantage of this distraction if they wanted to…

"_More,"_ hissed a chilling, disembodied voice that seemed to have been spoken from somewhere right next to his ear. _"More. More! MORE!"_

Kevin's heart hammered against his ribcage frenziedly, threatening to burst from his chest. Looking around for the source of the noise, he thought she saw a pair of hideous bluish eyes staring out of the blackness above for a split second, but as soon as he blinked, they'd vanished. A shadow flashed across the barren room, only to be swallowed up by the dark like the eyes had.

"Help," he tried to whisper to Allie and Matt as they approached his hiding place, but ended up producing only a strangled gasp.

Outside, the zapping abruptly ceased, only to be replaced by the Sonichus' terrified voices.

"Y'all hear that?" one said shakily. "They're back! GodJesus, they're coming back!"

_WHAT'S coming back?! _Kevin thought to himself as chills of fear lanced down his spine. Through the hole, he could see the Sonichus retreating back to protect their female companion, readying fresh Thundershocks while the little Roseys giggled and played patty-cake around their shoes. Their injuries had stopped bleeding by now, and they'd most likely forgotten about the whole "jumping dimensions" thing.

"Sarge, did ya see anything?" asked another Sonichu.

"No. Watch the skies," the EHPF sergeant ordered. He sounded just as terrified as the other officers. "If they come in through the windows, zap 'em to the extr…"

_CRASH!_

"GODJESUS NO!" shrieked the Rosechu. "NOOOOOO! AAAAIIIIIEEEEEE!"

"What the_ FUCK?!_" Matt gasped in something between a whisper and a fearful shout.

Kevin and his friends watched, transfixed by absolute terror as something blue and massive smashed straight through the wall and thundered into the room towards the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. With cries of terror, the Sonichus whirled around and unleashed a triple bolt of bioelectricity, but their attacks simply rebounded off the thing's armored skin and into the floor as if they'd been nothing more than Sparks. Before the foremost chu could ready a second Thundershock, the newcomer raised what looked like a massive AK-74u in one hand and fired off a single deafening shot that struck its target straight in the chest.

_BANG!_ The round exploded in a geyser of gore, blasting open the EHPF officer's entire torso and exposing his ribcage and internal organs. With a horrendous shriek of pain, the Sonichu collapsed, flailing as his insides spilled out on the floor.

"RUN!" the sergeant bellowed in terror, and turned to flee. Before he could dash away, the massive beast raised its weapon and unleashed a second volley of explosive shells that turned him into a shower of red mist, fleshy scraps, and bits of fur and skin.

"SARGE!" screamed the remaining Sonichu, and hurled himself headlong at the attacker in what had to be the absolute _stupidest _decision he could have made in such a dire situation. The thing's armored hand fastened around his neck, lifting him bodily off the floor with a horrifying metallic chuckle.

As the Rosechu wailed and the larvae giggled to themselves, the monster stepped to the edge of the building, holding its struggling captive out over the ashen abyss. Stowing the large pistol with its other hand, it reached up to a sheath on its back and drew a jagged, misshapen sword. A rusty roaring sound filled the air, as if someone was using a chainsaw nearby. Only when the thing raised the blade did Kevin finally realize that the noise was coming _from the weapon itself_.

_Crack!_

A bolt of violet lightning flashed across the fallen city, and for one second, Kevin saw the monster's face…or rather, the colossal horned helm that covered its face like a piece of armor worn by the Knights Templar. Bulky plates of rusted metal covered it from head to foot, adorned with spikes, skulls, and other articles of intimidation. Whatever it was, this thing was _definitely_ not human. Not even _close_ to human.

"AAGHGAHGHGHGHGHGH!" gasped the choking Sonichu as it tried pathetically to punch its captor's plated chest. "GHGHGHGHAGAAAAAHHHHH! NHHHRRRRGGGGHHH!"

The armored knight simply let out a savage laugh and buried its sword in the screaming Sonichu's ribcage, sawing straight through muscles and bones as if they were crepe paper and toothpicks. As the chu was torn in half, its killer sheathed the sputtering weapon, took hold of its spasming lower body by its lightning bolt tail, and lifted it up off the ground as easily as a little girl would lift a doll.

"_FOR TZEENTCH!"_ it roared, and hurled both halves of its victim out into space.

Allie clapped a hand over her mouth to stifle her oncoming scream, but even if she had, she would never have been able to drown out the horrified cries of the Rosechu. Snatching up the little Roseys, the pink Electric Hedgehog Pokemon turned and ran for the makeshift bridge. By now, Kevin was far beyond the point where he would have even considered shooting the chu and her illegitimate offspring. He was paralyzed, rooted to the spot, unable to do anything but watch this cavalcade of otherworldly horrors unfold before his frightened eyes.

As the Rosechu leapt onto the bridge, a horrific shriek that sounded like the cry of some monstrous bird echoed across the city. Terrified beyond rational thought, she made her way towards the other building, step by shaky step, clutching the feral larvae to her chest for balance.

"HRUEEEEEEEE!"

_SHICK!_

Something like a colossal blue manta ray with a hideous spiked mouth swooped down from up above and plucked the Rosechu right off the bridge, impaling her with its lamprey-like jaws and curved fangs. Two more of the flying beasts emerged from holes in an adjacent building and flapped out to join in on the feast. Kevin heard the chu screaming as the creatures tore her limb from limb, dropped her, caught her and fed on her some more, then finally let her mutilated corpse fall to the ashen sea below.

"HRUUUUEEE! HRUEEEEE!" shrieked the flying hunters as they wheeled back to find more prey.

"WOSEEEEEEY!"

Kevin looked back toward the bridge to see a new horror emerge from the darkness below. The armored warrior had gone now, and only the two feral Roseys were left alive. The Rosechu had dropped them when the flying manta ray had taken her, and now both of the little Electric Hedgehog Pokemon were waddling towards Kevin, crying their hideous eyes out as shadows and malformed shapes twisted and leapt from the room where the EHPF officers had died.

Another blue shadow hissed across the bridge, and just like that, the two Roseys became one. A tiny shriek of pain and fear echoed through the sky, followed by a sloppy _crunch_ and then silence. Before the last Rosey could waddle another two feet, a horrendous slimy pink creature leapt onto the bridge from the floor below and snatched her up in two of its four slender clawed arms. The thing's twisted torso seemed to be made up of nothing but a monstrous mouth with two sets of jaws. Laughing madly, it raised the squealing, struggling Rosey to its maw and bit down hard, shredding the helpless little chu into a thousand scraps of meat.

"_More,"_ the voice chuckled again, and this time, Kevin knew exactly what it meant. _"More. More! MORE!"_

Licking its bloody lips, the warped monstrosity unleashed another bout of insane laughter and began crawling forward, eying the helpless Jerkops at the other end of the makeshift bridge.

_Crack!_

The familiar hollow report of Nick's sniper rifle reached Kevin's ears just as the nightmarish creature screeched in pain and toppled off the bridge with an oozing hole punched in the side of its head. Down below, more of the chattering beasts conjured what looked like balls of pink fire and hurled them across the city in a furious attempt to pin down the unseen Jerkop who'd just killed or critically injured one of their brethren.

"NOW!" shouted Matt, and dragged Kevin and Allie away from the hole. "Over the bridge! Hurry!"

"ARE YOU INSANE?!" screamed Allie as Matt drew his shotgun and leapt onto the slab of concrete and steel with the intent of crossing right into the heart of the swarm.

"There's no way down to the street here!" the Jerkop yelled back. "We stay here and we'll be trapped! Come on!"

"He's right," added Kevin, and reached for his AK-47. "One at a time! Watch the skies!"

More rifle fire lanced down from wherever Nick was shooting from, suppressing the horrors as they climbed further and further up toward the three operatives. Step by terrified step, Matt, Kevin, and Allie made their way across the bridge, taking care not to look down upon the unsettling sight of a wall of pink six-limbed beasts closing in on them.

"HRUEEEEEEEE!"

"TWO 'O CLOCK HIGH!" yelled Allie. Kevin whirled and opened fire frenziedly, striking one of the flying manta rays in its wing and sending the creature crashing headlong through the side of another building. Judging by the commotion within, its wound unfortunately hadn't been fatal.

A taloned limb appeared over the edge of the bridge, followed by the hideous face of one of the pink creatures. Allie raised Trogdor and blasted it right in the mouth, setting its entire torso on fire instantly. The monster shrieked and let go instinctively, plummeting into the abyss as its body burned and promptly split into two small lumps of writhing blue flesh.

Kevin reached the other side and pulled Allie across after him, then fired off another burst into the sky to keep the circling rays at bay. The room stank of dead chu flesh and corruption, but none of that mattered to the desperate Jerkops. As long as the giant armored knight didn't return, this building was their absolute best bet for getting away from the nightmares chasing them.

To do that, though, they'd need to get down to the street where they wouldn't be so easily trapped by whatever these things were. And judging by how high up they were, the way down wouldn't exactly be a walk in the park.

* * *

**?**

If Al, Amanda, and Serge had known what Kevin, Allie, and Matt had to deal with at the moment, they would have gladly traded places in a snap. Crouched behind a crumbling wall next to a large open space Al assumed had once been a plaza, the three operatives were working their way across to the other side, towards the sounds of gunfire and muzzle flash they'd heard a few minutes earlier.

"GOO-GOO! GOO-GEEEEEEEE!"

"WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! SONEEEEEE!"

In the center of the ash-strewn plaza, a group of eight-foot-tall, heavily armed soldiers - wearing green armor and what looked like metal gas masks – had captured and surrounded the two injured feral Sonees, who were now screaming and crying at the tops of their little lungs.

"_Rejoice…"_ hissed one of the warriors as it snatched up the blind Sonee in a rusted hand and shook the two bloody stones out of its eye sockets. _"Rejoice, servant of the Great Corrupter…"_

Grey smoke and a cloud of flies poured from the thing's gauntlet and forced themselves into the little chu's open mouth. The Sonee wailed helplessly and beat against the hard crushing metal with its armstubs, but its tormentors simply laughed and looked on as pus-filled boils and malevolent tumors erupted from the tiny creature's torso, eye sockets, and armstubs, swelling and swelling until it had become a blob of corrupted flesh - no longer recognizable as a Sonee.

"NEEEE! GOO-GOO! NEEEEEEE!" shrieked the other, noseless feral. The horrific ritual was promptly repeated, but whatever malignant forces had mutated the previous Sonee seemed to be working in a completely random manner. As soon as the struggling chu inhaled a single breath of flies and smoke, its chubby belly ruptured and split, disgorging its intestines and muscles until the Sonee had literally turned inside out, its flayed skin hanging from it like a bloody cloak.

A choking, spattering sound reached Al's ears as Amanda collapsed to her hands and knees and vomited into the ashes, her body shaking wildly of its own accord. Praying that the armored soldiers were too preoccupied to hear it, the Legend allowed Amanda a few seconds to pull herself back together, then continued leading his squad through the rubble.

"_The others?" _growled a metallic voice from the central plaza.

"_Imperial loyalist dogs,"_ spat another one of the soldiers as the two infested Sonees spasmed to their feet and waddled up to the squad, squealing hideously as their dead flesh continued to bubble and morph. His armor was more highly decorated than those of the soldiers surrounding him, and what was more, he had also adorned it with the skin of a dead Sonichu they'd caught and killed earlier. _"Search the area. Kill or convert the rest, and the yellow and pink xenos too."_

"HRUEEEEEEEE!" A flock of blue, tusked mantas flapped between the buildings overhead, temporarily distracting the armored warriors long enough for Al, Amanda, and Serge to run across the plaza to a large chunk of rock with an eight-pointed star carved into the side.

"_The Lord of Change seeks them."_ The soldier chuckled and raised a massive assault rifle with spikes and skulls all across its plated surface. _"Perhaps the other gods have taken notice as well. No matter. Grandfather Nurgle claims all in the end…"_ Laughing to himself, he led his squad away into the streets. The mutant Sonees stumbled after him obediently, tripping and gurgling. The corruption in their little bodies was forcing them onward against whatever will they had left.

When they had gone, Amanda immediately broke down, sobbing in utter panic. Al himself now teetered on the brink of insanity, and Serge had retreated to his inner "happy place" and was amusing himself by humming old Russian folk songs. In the end, it was Amanda who broke the silence in probably the most appropriate way to sum up all the horrors they'd just witnessed.

"Right, that's it," she groaned, wiping her mouth on her sleeve. "That's _it_. We're all _fucked_."

In a normal situation, Al would have reprimanded her. Now, though, he wholeheartedly agreed with Amanda's statement. Wherever they were, he and his Jerkops had stumbled into some hellish dimension of mutants, black magic, and cold-blooded killing machines. To say they were in over their heads would have been the understatement of the century.

"We're just going to have to keep moving," he said shakily, and raised his Desert Eagle toward the building they'd spotted the muzzle flashes in. "That's where Nick must've landed. If anyone else heard the shots, they'll go there too."

"So will enemies," grunted Serge as he snapped out of his fantasy world. "Not just shock-pigs."

Al exhaled loudly, ejecting a cloud of ash and steam from the sides of his welder's mask. He hated to admit it, but the huge Russian was absolutely right. There was no telling whether Nick had already been overrun up there by the same demonic creatures who had been killing off and torturing the chus all throughout the city. Just fifteen minutes ago, they'd passed the remains of the other Rosechu, who seemed to have been transformed into a hermaphrodite and now bore a malformed set of male genitals just above her china. She'd been whipped apart, flayed open to reveal muscles, organs, and bone beneath her ragged flaps of pink skin. But most disturbing of all had been the look on her face – absolute pleasure, as if she'd reached an orgasm at the moment of her death.

_And here I was thinking their BDSM fetish couldn't get any more disturbing,_ thought Al as he remembered the Rosechu's ecstatic smile and bulging eyes. Gritting his teeth, he stood up and scanned the plaza for more of the murderous beasts, then led his squad forward, into the unknown. What awaited them further in the depths of the city was anyone's guess.

* * *

**?**

_CRACK! CRACK!_

Nick felt the rifle kick against his shoulder twice, and grinned as two mantas fell from the sky, trailing dark sprays of purple blood from their punctured wings and bodies. Swinging the barrel around toward the building where he'd seen Matt, Allie, and Kevin vanish into, the Jerkop fired off the rest of his clip into the writhing four-armed pink creatures climbing all over its surface, killing at least half a dozen more with well-placed shots. Dozens upon dozens of fireballs impacted against the protective walls of his little sniper's roost, but failed to penetrate.

Beside him, Sugarplum Fury whined and growled as each of the flaming shots struck the tower. The poor honey badger had slipped into a sort of "desperation mode", and was now curled up on the floor and pawing uselessly at the concrete. Nick was too distracted by his targets to worry about her, but he sincerely hoped Sugar was still ready and willing to defend herself if those things made it into the building. It might be futile, but if the skyscraper was breached, he wasn't about to go down without a fight.

"HRUEEEEEEEE!"

_CRASH!_

Nick leapt back, swearing in Spanish as one of the winged beasts crashed through the side of the building and lunged toward him and Sugar. Shrieking, it opened its tusked mouth and snapped forward, nearly fastening onto the Jerkop's arm in a blood-crazed rage.

"ADIOS, MOTHERFUCKER!" yelled Nick, and drove his machete straight into the manta's spiked head. He nearly lost his foot as the tusks snapped shut inches from his leg, but managed to retrieve the weapon and start frenziedly hacking away at its body. The two huge curved teeth on either side of its mouth clattered to the floor as Nick lopped them off, then delivered a forceful slash right across the beast's thrashing tail. Bleeding and grievously wounded, the huge leathery creature flopped backwards out of the hole in the wall and took off with another piercing cry.

Nick glanced down. Blood spattered the floor, but even Sugar wouldn't touch it. She was hissing and snarling like a rabid wolf, stumbling backward away from the constantly-shifting oily pools of violet liquid.

"You and me both, _amiga_," muttered the Mexican soldier, and wiped his bloody machete on the wall.

Gunfire sounded from the building with the other three operatives, and Nick immediately raised his rifle's scope to his eye. Through the whirling storm of ash, he could see flashes of light and bursts of flame coming from inside. Allie, Kevin, and Matt must have found more of the creatures. Cursing, Nick stowed the weapon on his back and grabbed Sugar. She didn't even try to bite him…in fact, she almost seemed happy at the prospect of leaving this nightmarish place.

"Hang on tight, girl," he ordered, and dashed for the stairwell. From here, he had no way of giving his squad any sniper support, and judging by how many of those things were crawling into the building, they needed every last bit of help they could get.

* * *

**?**

"I'm telling you, we're going the wrong way," insisted Jexis as she swung her MP5 from left to right, scanning the dark alleys and blinking furiously to keep the ashes out of her eyes. "The gunshots came from up there. She nodded to the building that, unbeknownst to her, Kevin, Allie, and Matt were trying to fight their way out of at that very moment. "There! Muzzle flash! Someone's in there!"

Kuri gazed up at the skyscraper and spun one of her knives around reflexively. "I don't know if we…"

A thunderous blast shook the city, nearly knocking both Jerkops to their feet. Shocked, Jexis gasped and turned to see a huge fireball rising from the street somewhere a few hundred yards away through the city. As they watched, the explosion dissipated into smoke and was quickly replaced by a flashing maelstrom of gunfire. A single flaming chunk of debris hurtled through the air, spinning out of the blast until it smashed into the side of another building and punched a massive hole in the wall.

Kuri glanced at her squadmate. "There."

"What?" The teenage medic blinked in surprise. "You don't mean we're gonna…"

"Someone's firing an AK-47 over there," insisted Kuri. "I think we just found our squad."

"Hope you're right," Jexis replied shakily, and switched her MP5 to full auto. "Okay, I'll go first. You watch the alleys and let me know if anything comes from be-"

_CRASH!_

The side of what looked like a massive stone cathedral exploded outward in a burst of grey dust and flickering purple flames, sending huge chunks of bricks and concrete raining down into the street. Kuri lost her balance and fell over, then scrambled away as a piece of flying rubble crashed onto the street. Three seconds more and it would have shattered her leg.

"You okay? _You okay?_" yelled Jexis as a metallic roar sounded across the city.

"Yeah, I'm fine!" Kuri leapt to her feet and started pulling the cadet away from the blast radius. "What was that? Did you see it?"

"No! I don't know! Let's get out of here before we find out!"

"FUCKING RUN!" Zoey yelled as she emerged from the dust cloud with her squad leader hot on her heels. "GRENADE! PUT A GRENADE IN THERE!"

"FIRE IN THE HOLE!" shouted Steve, and turned around as he wrenched a frag grenade off his belt. Heaving the explosive at some unknown assailant, he grabbed Zoey and pushed her forward. "Go! Get the fuck away from the…JEXIS! KURI!"

"STEVE!" Jexis waved frantically to the two Jerkops. "OVER HERE! HERE!"

The grenade exploded behind Zoey and Steve with a deafening _BANG!_ as the Jerkops tore down the street, stumbling over piles of debris and jagged metal scraps in a rush to rejoin their squadmates. Another horrific bellow echoed across the fallen city, and Kuri felt the hairs on her arms prickling up in apprehension.

"What the hell's going on?!" she yelled as the two squad leaders slid down a large chunk of rubble and landed next to her and the medic.

"Later! RUN!" Zoey dropped her spent magazine to the ground, where it was quickly swallowed up by the churning ashes. A fresh cloud of dust exploded from the half-collapsed cathedral as a colossal red and yellow shape emerged with a roar of grinding metal. Without a word, Steve and Zoey dashed away faster than a cute boyfriend-free girl running away from Christian Weston Chandler.

Kuri and Jexis needed no second obligation.

* * *

**?**

"LEFT SIDE! LEFT SIDE!" shouted Matt as another seething horror lunged out of the hallway towards them. Allie swung Trogdor around and sprayed blazing fuel across the thing's face, setting two of its arms and its torso on fire and forcing it to beat a hasty retreat. Behind her, Kevin had dropped to one knee and was firing off shots with total disregard for whether they hit anything or not. The laughing fiends seemed to be able to shrug off anything less than a rifle bullet, but even they knew to stay far away from the murderous AK-47. He _might_ have killed two, but by now, Kevin was long past the point where he could even keep count. Survival was the only thing he cared about now.

The Jerkops hurried down another flight of stairs, slamming doors and knocking over whatever they could in an attempt to slow down the tide of twisted pink creatures. They were horribly outmatched in close quarters, and a last stand would be futile. All they could do now was run, and run _fast_.

Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin glimpsed a large plume of dust rising from a building several stories down. The rattle of gunfire sounded from the streets, and for one horrifying moment, Kevin thought the monstrous knight had returned with backup.

"Come on!" Allie yelled, and pulled Kevin through the stairwell door just as a pair of shrieking monsters dropped down from the ceiling towards their escaping prey. She gave them both a quick blast of fire and slammed the door as the things burned and collapsed on the stairs.

The second floor of the building they were standing in seemed to have been hit by some sort of colossal explosion untold decades ago, and now lay half demolished – a great pile of rubble leading down to an open area in the streets with a statue of some twisted god and an eight-pointed star. At least it was better than being trapped in that skyscraper like rats in an air duct.

Kevin took the lead and slid down through the debris and ash, fighting to keep his balance as pieces of concrete slipped beneath his boots. Allie and Matt were right behind him, hanging on to each other for support due to the added weight of Trogdor.

_If we just get down to the street, we'll have the advantage,_ the Jerkop thought desperately as he pulled himself over a large steel support beam. Behind him, one of the slavering beasts emerged from a window and dropped down, howling furiously as it watched its prospective victims flee down through the field of debris. Kevin raised his AK-47 and sent it scurrying for cover with a five-round burst, buying himself and his squadmates a few more precious seconds to put as much distance between them and their hunters as possible.

Above, the rays were assaulting Nick's tower, forcing their leathery winged bodies inside as heavy rifle rounds tore into them one by one. Praying that the sniper could find a way out of the building, Kevin dropped over the side of a concrete block and fell the last few feet to solid ground, then turned to help Allie down. As soon as he'd landed beside his squadmates, Matt immediately drew his shotgun again and racked the spent shell out of its chamber with a loud _click-click_.

Moving with a speed that only terror could have granted them, the Jerkops made for the nearest piece of cover – the base of the statue. It was a miracle they managed to reach it before the horrors emerged once more.

"Now…what?" Kevin panted as they watched the pink creatures spilling out of the building, searching for them and chattering to each other in some demonic tongue that sounded like the laughter of twenty insane men and women.

Before either Matt or Allie could answer, more gunfire had filled the air. Suddenly, the writhing crowd of twisted beasts was falling back to the safety of their building, running like frightened mice from the hail of assault rifle, pistol, and SMG rounds that Steve, Zoey, Kuri, and Jexis were pouring into their ranks.

"YES!" roared Matt, and leapt up with savage determination. "Come on, let's finish this! GET 'EM!" He stepped forward and began laying down blast after blast from his shotgun at the retreating swarm, more concerned with sowing panic among them than actually killing any.

"What the hell are you _doing_?" yelled Steve as he and the other Jerkops dashed towards them. "MATT! KEVIN! ALLIE! RUN FOR YOUR FUCKING LI-"

_CRASH!_

Kevin whirled toward the source of the blast and ejected his empty magazine, sliding his last full one into the AK as something monstrous and metallic lumbered out of a pile of rubble that had once been a solid concrete wall.

Like a miniature tank on legs, a titanic armored walker stepped forward from the dust cloud to face the assembled Jerkops. Standing nearly three times Kevin's height, the vehicle was painted with a slew of dark red and black, along with countless skulls, spikes, and chains of barbed wire. Its surface was marred by a thousand burns and indentations, as well as several bullet holes from battles of ages past. From its plated shoulders hung a pair of cylindrical arms, one of which was equipped with a significantly larger version of the chainsaw-sword the knight had wielded. Its mechanized legs and feet were perfectly suited to rough terrain, sacrificing speed for mobility as they maneuvered the walker over the ruins of the destroyed wall and toward the Jerkops.

What scared Kevin the most, however, was not the vehicle itself, but the creature piloting it.

Lashed inside what must have been a cockpit by a dozen coils of barbed wire, a single Sonichu – the last of the six EHPF officers who'd been sucked into the portal – moaned and gasped with what seemed like agony and rage. Its eyes had been sewn shut with more wire, but somehow the chu was now fused with its metal exoskeleton, and fully in control of its movements. A ragged eight-pointed star lay engraved in the skin of its furry chest, shining with flickers of orange and blood-red flame that seemed to emanate from inside the chu itself.

"What in God's name…" Zoey gasped in revulsion and horror.

"Zoey. Kevin. Jexis," ordered Steve, and dropped to one knee with his P90 raised to his shoulder. "Spread out on my mark and lay down support fire. I'll draw it in. Allie, get ready to torch the cockpit when it comes after me…"

The squad leader's voice trailed off and broke as a new sound split the air…the dreadful metallic clanging sound of steel boots on concrete.

Behind the Sonichu emerged a line of bulky shadows, marching forth from the smoke like the armies of hell itself. Armored in deepest crimson and gold, two dozen more of the knights and a small squad of what looked like elite warriors with chainsaw-axes spilled from the rupture, bearing a frightening array of assault rifles, pistols, larger weapons that glowed with baleful energy, and a handful of swords, axes, maces, and warhammers snatched from the realm of darkest nightmares.

"No…" Steve whispered, and for the first time since he'd joined the PVCC, Kevin heard nothing but sheer, undiluted fear in his squad leader's voice. Somehow, this was even worse than the sight of the murderous warriors standing before them.

The Sonichu and its massive piece of fused machinery both raised an arm simultaneously, their movements matching each other with horrific precision. A thunderous roar, far greater than any noise the chu could have made in its uncorrupted state, surged forth from its mouth as the knights began chanting something behind it.

Kevin looked at Allie in desperation, only to find that her face was as frozen with fright as Matt's and Kuri's and Jexis's and Zoey's and Steve's. He wanted to say something to her, to take her hand, to hug her, kiss her, anything, anything to comfort Allie and tell her it was okay, that they were all sharing the same nightmare, that they were going to emerge back into CWCville any second now, free of the torment and terror of this hellish place.

But as the warriors raised their weapons and began roaring savage battle cries at the top of their lungs, Kevin could finally understand what it was they had been chanting, and realized there had never been any hope for his squad's survival after all. From the moment they'd been caught in the Dark Mirror, every one of the Jerkops had been sentenced to die in this forsaken city.

_So this is how it ends,_ he thought.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" screamed the knights, and lifted their guns to fire.

"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" roared the berserk warriors, and raised their axes to strike.

"_BLOOD FOR THE BEAR GOD!"_ bellowed the armored Sonichu walker, and charged.

* * *

**?**

"I think they're gone for now, sweetie," muttered Nick as he set Sugarplum Fury down on the cracked concrete floor. The honey badger snuffled and scratched the side of her head indifferently. She'd kept herself relatively quiet and calm during the frantic flight downstairs away from the ravenous swarm of flying mantas, which was surprising given her apparent hatred of the vile beasts. Maybe it was shell-shock, or maybe she'd just decided to trust Nick for once in her life.

Whatever the case, the Jerkop was incredibly thankful that he'd made it down to the ground floor alive, and that Sugar hadn't clawed or bitten him at all. As docile as she was now, he still remembered that…_horrible_ training session where Kuri had almost lost her fingers. Nick hoped to all that was holy that Sugar's days of attacking him were over. Maybe by ferrying her to safety, he'd gained a measure of trust from the savage little creature.

"You think anyone's still alive out there?" he asked her in Spanish as he knelt and patted her behind the ears. There was no need for English any more. Not while he was on his own like this.

"Rrrowr," growled Sugar, and nuzzled Nick's hand.

"I know," replied the Mexican soldier, and sat down beside her. Drawing his machete, he began wiping off the spatters of oily purple blood with the sleeve of his combat fatigues. "Hate to admit it, but neither do I."

"Grrrr."

"I'm going crazy," Nick laughed, but there was not an ounce of humor in his voice. "Guess this is how it all ends, right? Talking to a honey badger and waiting to die in hell. _Dios mio._"

Sugar didn't respond, but merely curled up once more for a nap.

"Right. You call me if you need me to shoot something." The Jerkop stood and stretched, then drew his pistol with his free hand. "I'm gonna go check this place out."

The ground floor lobby was as empty of furnishings as the rest of the building, but signs of long-destroyed architecture remained nonetheless. Nick wandered from place to place aimlessly, inspecting anything that caught his attention. There was just a strange, alien atmosphere to this place, even though it seemed to have been built to house humans. It was as if the past and the far future had clashed horribly and then been run through the grimmest, darkest filter the world had ever known. Skulls and eight-pointed stars seemed to be the "in" things in this world.

_It's like something out of one of those post-apocalypse stories Steve's always writing,_ he thought to himself. Nick wasn't exactly sure what could have happened to the people who'd once lived in this place. Maybe there had never even _been_ any people here at all. Maybe this was just some ethereal projection of hell that he and his squadmates were sharing. Nick wasn't a particularly devout man…he'd long ago rejected the belief that God loved His creations after witnessing the horrible atrocities committed by Christian Weston Chandler and his army of freakish chus. But even now, he was beginning to wonder if all his sins had finally caught up with him.

And what about the others? What had their sins been, and why were they all damned as well? Yes, some of them had killed other men and women…loyalist mercenaries…but it had all been for the greater good. And Nick highly doubted that any kind of loving God would condemn anyone for killing as many Sonees and Roseys as the Honey Badgers had since their inception. If anything, they were doing Him a service by cleansing the world of those crimes against nature.

So why them, and why now?

"_Guh…guhhhh…hhhhelllpppp…"_

Nick raised his pistol toward where the rattling gasp had come from. Behind a pile of rubble protruded a single jagged yellow tailbolt, spattered in blood. It was more than obvious what the object was connected to.

"_Como estas,_ Sparky!" the Jerkop chuckled as he advanced on the wounded Sonichu. "Crashing into slumber on the job? Your father wouldn't like that now, would he?"

"No…ya don't…you're just a dirty…"

"Jerk? Troll? Spic? Look, _pendejo_, you were dead the moment I saw you. So why don't you just tell me what happened to all your chu friends, and maybe I'll just shoot you instead of chopping all your fingers off first."

"F***…you…" gasped the EHPF officer, and rolled over onto its stomach. Nick stepped right up to the prone creature and nudged its head around with the toe of his boot.

"My, my, what happened to you?" he asked condescendingly. "Listen, I've reconsidered my offer. Sugar!"

Across the room, the honey badger perked up and began trotting towards them. The smell of chu blood hung heavy in the air, and it wouldn't be long before Sugar went into a feeding frenzy. If the ferocity she'd displayed during the Soup Hotel extermination was any sort of barometer, then that Sonichu would be wise to start telling him what he wanted to know.

"Here's the deal," continued Nick as he knelt down and began sawing off one of the chu's pointy headspikes with his machete to keep as a trophy. "You start talking, and I'll put you down as painlessly as I can. You give me any trouble, and I'll leave you to my…ah…my _interrogator_."

Sugar appeared around the rubble pile, slavering like a rabid dog. Her eyes shone with a savage gleam, and it took a good chunk of Nick's willpower to not just break down and let her work her magic on the helpless Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

"So I'm gonna count to three," he said, and raised three fingers in front of the Sonichu's fused eyeballs. "One."

"The Combo's…going to kill y'all!"

Nick laughed. "We're in hell, buddy. We're already dead. Two."

"F*** YOU! F*** YOU!"

"Three. Sugar, safety o-"

_CRACK!_

"_Mierda!"_ yelled Nick as he spun toward the abrupt sound. The room filled with a deep purple glow, and a vertical line of blue fire materialized in midair no fewer than five yards away from him. As the Jerkop, Sugar, and the Sonichu watched in disbelief, a rift widened and expanded until it reached about six feet tall, then spat forth what looked like a dark cloud of shifting energy. It wasn't until the cloud stood up and shook its head that Nick finally realized that this thing that had emerged out of the portal was nothing less than…

"Ugh," grunted the black Rosechu dizzily, and brushed a few specks of debris out of her fur. "Another successful transport, right? They're not paying me anything _close_ to enough for this." She stretched and adjusted what looked like a purple armored bra. "Oh well, time to find…"

_Click!_

"Who the _fuck_ are you?" Nick snarled as he raised his pistol, lining up a shot directly toward…

…the wall?

"Look, I don't have time for this," replied the Rosechu from the top of the debris pile, where she was sitting cross-legged with a bored expression. "All you need to know is that…what the hell are you doing to that Sonichu?"

Nick glanced up at the newcomer, blinked, glanced down at the wounded EHPF officer, blinked again, then looked back to the Rosechu, who had seemingly just leapt through space in less than a second. "Interrogation?"

"Ha! No need." The female Electric Hedgehog Pokémon leapt down gracefully to join him. Sugar snarled at her, but Nick held up a hand to stop the honey badger. He wasn't entirely sure why this Rosechu didn't seem to want him dead…or why she wasn't a giggling airheaded abomination like the rest of her species. All he knew was that she could teleport, and judging by the prominent bulge in her panties, there was a bit more to her than her feminine form suggested. _Several_ bits more, apparently.

"What do you mean, 'no need?'" he said warily.

The hermaphroditic creature glanced down distastefully at the injured Sonichu. "Because you were probably going to ask him where your friends are, right?"

"Not really. I just wanted to know how he ended up here."

"Who cares?" laughed the Rosechu, and drove the heel of her boot into the side of the EHPF officer's neck. The Sonichu flopped around weakly and spluttered, trying to fight off the crushing force, but it wasn't long before his throat crunched beneath his killer's weight. Blood poured out of his nose and mouth in an expanding red pool, soaking into his fur and headspikes.

"What do you know about my friends?" asked the Jerkop as the chu spasmed and died. Sugar promptly hastened over to the corpse and began greedily ripping off large pieces of flesh.

"Hang on a sec. I'll get them for you."

With that, the Rosechu disappeared. Nick scratched his head. Maybe he really _was_ going crazy. There was no way in hell anything that unbelievably random could have possibly…

_CRACK!_

"AAAAAHHHH! FUCK! FUCK!" yelled Steve in immense agony, clutching the right side of his face as he materialized in the room with Zoey, Kevin, Jexis, Allie, Matt, and Kuri. All of the Jerkops looked as if they'd been through a meat grinder and an inferno, both at the same time.

"What the hell? WHAT THE HELL?" Zoey spun left and right with her AK-47 raised, searching for the now-nonexistent enemies that had been mere seconds away from slaughtering her and the rest of her comrades. "Nick? Sugar? What are you…"

"_Don't_ even ask," growled the sniper. "Hell, I don't even know what's going on anymore."

"Jexis! Get over here!" shouted Kevin as he and Kuri grabbed Steve's arms to keep him from collapsing. The squad leader's face had gone a deathly pale, and blood was now pouring through his fingers and sheeting down the side of his head and neck into the collar of his sweatshirt.

"What happened? I heard Kuri yell something about Steve's…"

"Let me see. Steve! Let me see the…oh, _fuck_." Kevin eased Steve's trembling hand away from the bloody injury to reveal an open hole that had once housed his right eye. "Fuck! Jexis, his eye's gone!"

"I've got gauze!" yelled the medic, and pulled a large wad of it out of her emergency kit as Sugar leapt forward and began licking her master's bloody face. "Sugar, get off! Kuri, what was it?"

"Shrapnel." Kuri eased Steve down onto his back, where Jexis could tend to him more easily. "Caught him right in the socket. When he pulled it out, he took out the eyeball too."

"Jesus," breathed Matt. "Is he gonna be okay?"

"I think I can stop the bleeding!" said Jexis, and began applying strip after strip of gauze to the wound to soak up the blood. "Keep his head tilted up!"

_CRACK!_

"…you _ever _tell me I don't know where we…huh?" Amanda asked confusedly as she suddenly appeared in the room, followed by Al, Serge, and the black Rosechu. "What the _fuck_? God _damn_ it! How'd we get here?"

"She knows," growled Nick, and pointed. One by one, all of the Jerkops except Steve and Jexis looked up expectantly, fixing the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon with a wall of blank, utterly confused stares. A few seconds of infuriating silence passed before the newcomer finally spoke.

"Look," said the Rosechu in a slow, patient voice. "I know you all probably got about a bajillion questions you want me to answer, and I'm just going to say this right now: don't even _try_ to figure out what just happened to you. For now, all you need to know is that my name's Silvana Rosechu, and believe it or not, I'm on your side."

Zoey blinked. "What?"

"I know, I know." Silvana raised her hands and rolled her eyes. "You weren't around for Project Asperchu, so you're probably still thinking that me and every one of my horrible brothers and sisters are still Chandler's retarded puppets, right? Well, turns out you're gonna have to deal with a few big changes once I take you home." She pointed to Steve. "Stabilize him and get ready to leave. We're going back to CWCville."

"Hold on, hold on," said Al as he stepped forward. "I know about Project Asperchu. Are you…PVCC?"

"Ehhhhh…not _really_," replied Silvana. "I just go where my father tells me to go and do what he tells me to do. And since my father's been working so closely with that Walsh woman you all love so much, I guess I don't have a choice, now do I?"

"Okay. Stop!" yelled Zoey. "Where the hell are we? How'd we even end up in this place?"

The Rosechu sighed. "You don't want to know. Dimensional crossings aren't exactly the safest way to travel. If you do it right, you might end up in…I don't know…somewhere better than here. If you fuck it up, like Walsh did with that stupid Dark Mirror test, then you end up here. Father calls it the Warp. Think of it like an interdimensional dumping ground, full of things that want you deader than dead."

"Father? Who are you ta-"

"ENOUGH!" yelled Silvana, and levitated a few feet off the ground. "No more questions! Is Blondie stable?"

Jexis looked up from Steve. "Yeah. I mean, yes, I think I stopped the bleeding enough for…"

"Okay. Hold on."

Kevin felt himself unconsciously grab hold of Allie's hand. What little sanity remaining in his mind had evaporated long ago, and now there was nothing left but a seemingly never-ending parade of horrifying randomness. The Sonichu mech had been literally three inches away from grinding his face into mush when the world suddenly vanished and he'd ended up here, plucked from the edge of death by a force he still couldn't understand. For the most part, he didn't even _want_ to understand it. He just wanted to go home and leave this nightmare world behind.

A field of purple energy expanded around Silvana as she called up another rift, identical to the one she had used to enter the Warp. Once again, Kevin felt the lightning enter him, carrying him back into the void and out of reality itself.

As the dead city and all of its horrors melted away, the world turned to violet. Storms of cosmic energy swirled around Kevin as he was hurled through time and space, across entire realities and dimensions…none of which he could comprehend in the slightest. Once, he glimpsed a single pretty young woman, very similar to Allie in appearance, floating peacefully in the void and wearing clothes identical to those of Christian Weston Chandler. Passing it off as a hallucination, he closed his eyes and thought of his mother and father, of Lucy and Nate, and of all his old friends from high school. He hadn't seen their faces in either three or six years, and for all he knew, they probably thought he was long dead.

_If only we could tell everyone the truth about CWCville,_ he thought to himself as the violet world shimmered and gave way to darkness. _If only they knew what I've done…what I've fought for._

"Kevin?"

Kevin opened his eyes and blinked. It was dark, he was flat on his back, and Allie was kneeling beside him, still holding his hand. Beneath him lay the cold hard asphalt of a CWCville street. Brightly-lit skyscrapers towered overhead, and past them, he could make out the tiny pinpricks of stars in the night sky. The night was cold…very cold, more like winter than the end of spring.

Home.

"We're back," he whispered, and gave Allie a warm smile. She returned it and helped him to his feet. Both Jerkops were a little shaky upon first standing up, but the familiar sensations of the city soon returned, filling Kevin with an intense surge of relief and joy. For the very first time in his life, he was glad to be in CWCville.

"YEAH!" shouted Matt as he dropped to his knees and looked around, tallying up every Honey Badger in sight. "We made it! We all made it out alive!"

"Barely," Steve groaned. Jexis, Kuri, and Zoey were helping the injured squad leader up while Al was speaking with Silvana over by the sidewalk. Amanda, Serge, and Nick were scoping out their location, trying to get a fix on where exactly in CWCville they'd all landed.

"Looks like it's about 8 or 10 o'clock," observed Kevin. "Were we gone that long? It didn't feel like that much."

Allie shrugged. "You're asking me? I don't care what time it is - I'm just glad to be home."

"If you can call this place home," added Matt as he stared around the street in sudden apprehension. "Where'd we end up? Is this the abandoned zone?"

Kevin stared up at the nearest apartment building, noting the shadows moving around inside the lit windows. "I don't think so. There's people here. Lightning district, maybe?"

"Maybe. If that's the case, then we need to get off the street, fast."

The west side of the city, nicknamed the Lightning district, was a notoriously chu-heavy locale, and many of its houses and apartments had been converted over the years to house the ever-expanding Electric Hedgehog Pokémon population. Naturally, since all of the chus went tax-free and received all of their money from the city budget, they could afford much more high-quality amenities and housing than the humans of CWCville could even hope to _see_ in their lifetimes.

But this wasn't even close to luxurious. The walls and windows of the surrounding shops and restaurants were plastered with graffiti and propaganda posters, and several panes of glass had been broken. **FACE-RAPING SLUT** had been sprayed across a nearby billboard which had apparently once held an image of Rosechu's head. Around it lay a myriad of other strange slogans, none of which Kevin recognized from his night patrols.

**ONLY DEATH AWAITS THE SONICHU SPAWN**

**STAY IN THE TIME VOID FOREVER, YOU COCKSUCKING MANBABY**

**RISE, RESIST, REMEMBER TENNESSEE**

"Does anyone know what the hell all this stuff means?" asked Matt to no one in particular. Kevin and Allie shook their heads. A chorus of "no"s swept through the Honey Badgers. Only the Legend himself seemed to have the tiniest idea of what was going on, and from the looks of it, whatever Silvana was telling him had just taken a few years off his life.

"…and I've notified Walsh," the psychic Rosechu explained brusquely. "I can take you to Menchi-Nasu, but you're on your own from there on out. Remember, I only did this on my father's orders. Don't take it personally."

"No," replied Al. "No, I…I understand. She'll want to debrief us. But please, don't bring us in in and cause…"

_CRACK!_

Kevin felt himself pulled through another, smaller rift at a truly mind-shattering speed, twisting and flashing in and out of reality until…

"…too much chaos," finished Al as he looked up and found himself staring at Mary Lee Walsh, Vivian Gee, Liquid Chris, and Kacey Devoria. The Honey Badgers were no longer outside in the street, but rather, inside what seemed to be an old high school principal's office that had been expanded and converted into a command center for the PVCC. Flat-screen monitors decorated the walls, and a huge bank of computers and laptops had been set up at what Kevin assumed was Vivian's overwatch desk. Several windows allowed the room's occupants to see what was going on outside, and Kevin could make out several Jerkops in full combat gear making their way down the halls. Each group was accompanied by what appeared to be a tiny floating machine, but he couldn't tell what the things were at this distance.

It was impossible to tell which party was more surprised or happy to see the other, but judging by the look of sheer gratitude on Mary Lee Walsh's face, the Honey Badgers had not gone unmissed.

"Good God," the PVCC commander breathed, and stepped forward to examine her newly-returned Jerkops. "You're alive. You're all alive."

"Alive, present, and reporting for duty, ma'am," Al reported sharply and saluted before respectfully removing his welder's mask. "If I may make one request, though…"

"Denied, Ledger," replied Walsh. "You don't get _one_ request. You and your squad literally walked through hell without losing a single operative. By my authority and the authority of the entire PVCC administration, _you may make as many goddamn requests as you want_."

"If that means I can also speak freely," grunted Steve as Zoey helped him forward. The Jerkop's makeshift gauze eye patch was soaked in red stains, and his entire body was visibly shaking from blood loss. "I could use some fucking medical attention, commander."

Walsh nodded. "Silvana?"

The black Rosechu vanished, taking Steve with her to what Kevin assumed was the infirmary, then popped back into the room. It took her less than five seconds to complete the trip.

"Thank you," said Al. "Now I think we'd all like to know what exactly went wrong, and how we ended up fighting for our lives against…" He turned to Silvana. "What did you call them?"

"Daemons," replied Silvana. "Daemons, Chaos Space Marines, and other servants of the four Ruinous Powers."

"What she said," the Legend finished.

"It's a long and complicated story that involves idiocy and irresponsibility on my part," Walsh admitted with a good measure of shame in her voice. "I miscalculated the Dark Mirror's area of effect. Basically, you were all trapped in the Warp because I put my faith in a form of energy we hadn't yet mastered. But if it's any consolation, we managed to stabilize the weapon and used it to trap Chandler's cloned sister, Crystal. It was supposed to trap Chandler himself, but…"

"Wait, wait, wait," Zoey interjected. "When did you do all this? We've only been gone a few hours."

"It probably felt like that to you," replied Liquid. "You were below the Time Void – it must have played temporal havoc with you. You were lucky Graduon stabilized the shift long enough for Silvana to pull you out."

"_Wait, wait, wait,"_ repeated Zoey. "Please, please just slow down. What's a Time Void? What do you mean, 'temporal havoc'? What shift? Wh-"

"We jumped forward through time," muttered Al, and looked at each member of his squad in turn. His voice sounded unnaturally harsh, filled with defeat and helpless anger. "I'm sorry. I should have told all of you as soon as Silvana told me. This isn't the CWCville we left."

Zoey stared back in silence, shocked beyond words. Around her, the other Jerkops were all experiencing the same reaction. If Kevin hadn't been clutching Allie's hand, he probably would have flat-out snapped and gone insane then and there.

"Today's date," Kacey explained reluctantly, "is January 10, 2008. You've been gone for nearly four years."

Kuri whirled around and stormed out the office door without even asking permission to leave. Jexis reached back and closed the door, but Kevin could still hear Kuri shouting at the top of her lungs in anger and disbelief, and the surprised yells of PVCC personnel as they ran over to calm her down. The rest of the squad had simply entered a zombielike trance, and were so dazed by this devastating news that they were simply unable to respond in any way, shape, or form.

Had Steve been with them, and if he'd still had both eyes, Kevin wouldn't have been surprised at all if the squad leader had dropped to his knees and started screaming that he'd slept too long.

"To put it lightly, quite a lot has happened in CWCville since the Dark Mirror test," continued Walsh in a gentle, sympathetic tone. "I'm sure your fellow Jerkops will be more than happy to fill in the details, but for now, I'll let Vivian give you a summary."

Gee nodded. "Back in the summer of 2004, we held a secret convention at Slumberland to appoint a second council of administrators. During that time, we gained the support of two major assets – Team Rocket and Dr. Ivo Robotnik – you probably know who they are from the news."

Kevin certainly did. The former had tried to murder him and his brother Nate worked for the latter as an engineer. And now the PVCC had just joined forces with a terrorist organization and a certified genius with an army of robotic death machines. If this was the world he'd been thrown into, then it seemed as if the conflict had just gone up a few notches in terms of insanity.

"We gained a huge amount of support after the merger," continued Vivian. "And to top it all off, Operation Rift was still going strong. We'd wiped out all but ten percent of the feral Sonee and Rosey population, so we started focusing attacks on the loyalist soldiers and EHPF. Slumberland was left to Giovanni, and we founded a new HQ in the ruins of Piedmont Virginia Community College. Those were the good days, and they lasted pretty much until 2006. Unfortunately, we had to abandon the new base in July 2005 because Chandler and his cloned sister destroyed the college after our new Jerkop high commander Marcus Bagget captured him and brought him here to be executed. We could've ended the conflict then and there, but we had no idea he'd resorted to cloning actual people. All he did was take his own DNA and turn it female."

Gee sighed and adjusted her hair. "By that fall, we were making serious progress on all fronts. The streets were quiet and attacks were at an all-time low, so that gave us time to focus on outfitting our Jerkop squads with support from Robotnik. We'll get you a LIESA unit soon enough, but I'm afraid you'll have to make do with an older model. We're running low on supplies as is…oh, you probably have no idea what I mean, do you? Well, Robotnik started making us everything we wanted and more – robotic soldiers called S.A.V.s, unmanned fighter jets, combat drones, and enough ammunition to bring down a small nation. Meanwhile, Alec and his Asperpedia team evolved that Sonee you captured into a ground-type Sonichu named Simonchu. He's been working as a support unit for a while now."

"You mean, we've got chus fighting _with_ us now?" Amanda scratched her head in disbelief.

"Project Asperchu was designed to give us a tactical advantage over the Chaotic Combo," explained Liquid. "Simonchu was only the first. Since then, we've cloned several more chus – Blazebob Sonichu, Chloe Rosechu, Asperchu, a new Combo and a new Sonichu…"

"…but only Simonchu's been successfully tested in the field so far," Gee added. "Then, in the spring of 2006, everything went to shit. It all started when we lost contact with an entire squad somewhere in the slum district. We thought maybe one of the Combo was responsible, but it was ferals. Thousands and thousands of ferals." Her eyes burned with anger. "Chandler was doing something right for once while we were all celebrating. He engineered a new trait into some Rosechus – a 'breeder trait' that reduces their gestation period and lets them lay up to eight eggs at once. He set them up with entire harems of Sonichus. They're basically baby factories now."

"Jesus Christ," gasped Nick. "What happened? Did Rift start again?"

"No, by then, Rift was over. We started Operation Spark to try and suppress the new wave of ferals. We gassed the sewers. We torched the abandoned zone. We killed and killed and killed until we thought we'd killed them all, but they just kept on coming. By the time we were forced to retreat, they'd swarmed Hogwash by attacking through the sewers. It was a miracle anyone managed to get out alive. We lost so many Jerkops…the whole operation was a complete failure. Now the ferals rule the streets. They just run around eating everything in sight. Chandler started this program where he assigned some citizens to be their 'caretakers'. Anyone who refused got turned into Feeding Day chow."

Kevin felt like collapsing, and probably would have if Allie hadn't been there to hold him up. Tens of thousands…_tens of thousands_. And if the ferals had indeed progressed out of the sewers and into the streets, what did that mean for the human population of CWCville?

"To top it all off, Sonichu and Rosechu went and got married March 17, 2006 : )," growled Kacey. "As if the chus needed more reasons to fight on, now here were their two biggest heroes…apart from Chandler, of course…tying the knot. And then they went ahead and popped out three little…"

"I'm getting to that," said Vivian. "A few months after the marriage, Chandler's old friend Sarah Hammer married this guy…Spicer, I think his name was…and gave up her power as Saramah Rosechu. We let her walk away alive, seeing as all she'd done was help destroy Graduon's golem."

"_The golem would have worked,"_ the spirit snarled inside Kevin's head. Again, no one else besides Walsh seemed to recognize Graduon's disembodied voice. He'd have to ask her about that later.

"So we sent in Megan Schroeder as her Sailor Megtune superhero persona to infiltrate the wedding, and she went ahead and declared herself a traitor to the PVCC." Vivian smiled knowingly. "Chandler bought it, of course. Wes Iseli staged a distraction, but all that matters is that Megan put herself on the line to become Chandler's potential Sweetheart. He loved her. Absolutely infatuated. He even gave her a cloned freak of her own – this giant skunk-thing she named Megagi. In fact, he was cloning a lot of new friends…even his dead dog."

Gee took a deep breath, but Walsh quickly stopped her and took over the explanation. "By June 2006, the ferals had overrun the city. We couldn't cripple their population at all. They were infesting homes, apartments, anywhere with food and people that Chandler could force to take care of them. No matter how many we killed, it would never be enough. Then we started seeing more and more homebreds wandering around with their parents. With the streets secured by ferals, the chus were adapting into the family stage of their lives – or at least, what Chandler thinks happy families _should_ be like. Which brings me to the biggest piece of bad news you'll hear tonight."

Kevin gulped. He had a feeling he knew what was coming, and it wasn't pretty.

"Sonichu and Rosechu…have had three children: Cera Rosey, Christine Rosey, and Robbie Sonee." Walsh shuddered violently and gritted her teeth. "We didn't think it would be so bad at first – just another three homebreds to kill. But then Chandler started touting the three brats as symbols of hope, turning them into the poster children for chu superiority. And guess what? They loved it. They loved all the attention, all the fame, all the entitlement, and everything else that came with their new status. They felt they deserved all of it, being so special and important just because their mother and father were the true and original Sonichu and Rosechu. So now we're stuck hearing about these spoiled, self-centered, spiteful little beasts everywhere we go." She clenched her hands into fists. "They've got to be put down. And when the time comes…"

Walsh paused, surveying each operative in turn as she made what was probably the most important decision she'd ever made in regards to the Honey Badgers. When she finally spoke again, there was nothing but pure loathing in her voice.

"When the time comes…I want _you_ to put them down."

Al's eyes widened in surprise. "What?"

"You heard me," said Walsh. "Think of it as my apology for stealing four years of your lives. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it, though. During the winter of 2006, Simonchu was injured while on assignment, and some mercenaries got ahold of a blood sample. Chris decided to send us a horrible insult, and cloned a female version of Simonchu he calls Simonla Rosechu. Rumor has it that he'd been trying to pair her up with Wild so he could have more damn poster children. But by the next summer, we'd stabilized the Dark Mirror into a weaponized form, and on October 11, 2007, we used it on Chandler to try and end this struggle. All we managed to do was trap Crystal inside, thanks to her saving Chris and Megan. Megan was even ready to sacrifice herself in order to trap Chandler forever."

She sighed. "But we failed. A dark energy surge escaped from the Warp and affected Giovanni's son. He's being hospitalized right now, but intel suggests that a Greater Daemon of the god Slaanesh named Reldnahc made its way into Naitsirhc's head and corrupted him. We don't know whether this is good or bad yet. We met four new major enemies that day – Megagi abandoned Megan due to her being a creation of Chandler's, a purple sword-wielding Sonichu named Darkbind showed up with Chandler's resurrected dog Patti-Chan, and we even got to tangle with Chandler's prototype clone of an Electric Hedgehog Pokémon – Bionic the Hedgehog. I don't even know how many Jerkops died in that battle, but we were crippled so hard that the PVCC's still recovering, even with our new robotic support units."

Each word was another cold dagger in Kevin's heart. While they'd been running from daemons and Chaos Marines, the PVCC had fallen to pieces. What kind of hellish chu-infested world had the Honey Badgers returned to inherit? And how could this Bionic be a predecessor to Sonichu, when Sonichu had been born through Sonic the Hedgehog's fusion with a Pikachu…

_NO! No! What did I tell you?_ his brain shouted, cutting off his thoughts before he gave himself an aneurysm and spontaneously replacing them with an image of a kitten.

"Then, on November 2nd, we finally had a reason to hope again. Chandler was experimenting with the Warp when he ended up traveling through time and getting himself stuck in a temporal dimension known as the Time Void. He's still trapped there even now. The city held a huge celebration…dancing, music, drinking, drugs, orgies…"

Matt looked as if he would have loved to blow his own head off with his shotgun then and there, if only to stop the painful news from coming.

"…but the very next day, 4-cent_garbage was assaulted by Sonichu, Rosechu, and Wild. We haven't managed to get Jason to tell us what exactly happened or how it went down, but he's in a comatose state right now from taking Rosechu's vagina to the face multiple times at high velocity. Apparently, when she gets really, really angry, she turns into something I can only describe as radical feminism gone about as wrong as wrong can go. Anyway, the chus picked up on our weakness, and decided to throw a one-two punch. Take a look at _this_."

Vivian tapped a few buttons on a nearby computer, and the screens suddenly filled with…

"Oh, good GOD!" screamed Zoey in revulsion as dozens of pictures of nude Rosechus in various suggestive and overly sexual poses engulfed the command center in a storm of pure wrongness.

Kevin's eyes drifted from horror to horror. A brown Rosechu with drills for hands had lifted up her carapace to reveal a pair of furry breasts underneath. Bubbles floated free in a tank of water, twisting her body and displaying her repulsive blue china. Lolisa had been photographed mid-dance, her hands clasped over her headphoned ears as she swayed and shook her body around, entirely _au natural_. In the background, a tiny Rosechu with wings and a firefly's tail hovered around, casting light on each of the models. But most dreadful of all was the true and original Rosechu herself. She showed no shame, took no prisoners, presented her lady parts for all the world to see in a disturbing display of what Kevin assumed was supposed to be feminism. But she was acting more like what some sex-deprived desperate virgin with rage would think feminists acted like. And this…this was just _sick_.

"Enough," said Walsh, and Gee mercifully terminated the slideshow of doom. "As you can see, the propaganda devastated us. People were exposed to this nearly every hour of every day – on TV, on billboards, magazines, newspapers, everything was filled to the brim with these…these utter _sluts_ demanding that we stop accusing them of being male by shoving their…chinas…in our faces. Figuratively and literally, in some cases."

Allie was squeezing Kevin's hand so hard that he thought she might crush the bones if she wasn't careful. But this was a grip of pure rage, not fear. All he could do was wait, and listen.

"And until you showed up tonight," concluded Mary Lee Walsh, "that was the last major event we had to deal with in your absence." She sat down in her command chair and crossed her legs, holding Graduon in her lap. "Is it beginning to make more sense now?"

"Yes," muttered Al. "Yes, it does. And it sickens me."

"Then that's where I'll leave you for tonight." The PVCC commander smiled. "Welcome to Menchi-Nasu, Honey Badgers. This is your new home. We'll get you outfitted and debriefed tomorrow, but for now, I think you've all earned a shower and some rest."

The door creaked open. Kuri poked her head back into the room. "Sorry. What just happened?"

Al glanced at Zoey. "You tell her."

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, Honey Badger barracks, 1 hour later**

"So what we have here," Al explained as Zoey passed him what looked like a legless Rosey made out of metal plating and prayers, "is a first-generation Robotnik LIESA unit, or Larval Infiltration, Extermination, and Support Automaton. This one's kind of…uh…special. Sorry, it's the only one they had left. Go ahead and activate it for them, Zoey."

"LIESA, power command 'on'," instructed the Jerkop.

Kevin, Allie, and the rest of the Honey Badgers watched with bemused interest as the combat drone's eye-screens flickered on into a basic Windows XP startup screen, then turned a bright green, like those of a real Rosey's. The familiar Windows jingle sounded from tiny speakers in its ears and cheekspots, and with a faint humming sound, the LIESA unit lifted up and began to hover in place a few inches above the floor.

"_SUZI, reporting for duty,"_ an artificial female voice crackled as the drone saluted with a hydraulic armstub.

Matt knelt beside the tiny robot and inspected it. "SUZI? What does SUZI stand for?"

SUZI scratched her head and looked around frenziedly. A shower of sparks burst from her cheekspot speakers, and she began spasming left and right. _"Command not recognized. Error 1742. Reverting to factory settings in 54321SuziSuzibobuzibananafan nafofuziiiiiieeeeeEEEEE!"_

_Crack! Pop!_ The LIESA unit dropped to the floor and tipped over backwards, gushing smoke as its circuits overloaded and died. It gave a momentary shudder, then lay still.

"Well, that sucked," commented Jexis in an accurate summary of everyone's reaction to the failed support weapon.

"Give me a few weeks with it and I'll have her up and running," replied Al, and picked up the limp combat drone. "We'll go over everything again tomorrow, but for now, I want you all to get some sleep. Dismissed." He turned and headed for his commander's office, carrying the still-smoking SUZI in one hand.

Kevin went straight for the couch and crashed down without a word, attempting to get himself more acclimated to this new barracks they'd been given. It was certainly larger, but it also looked like it had once been a classroom. The desks and chairs had been replaced by map tables, a sofa, and a crude fireplace made from an oil barrel and some metal pipes. A large whiteboard covered one wall – an improvement from the small board they'd used at Slumberland. The other walls were pretty much barren, but knowing his squadmates, they'd be filled with propaganda posters soon enough. At least the room had enough space for a TV…even if there were only two channels – both illegal – that were worth watching.

He still couldn't believe that all their possessions had been redistributed to other squads, though. When the Honey Badgers disappeared off the face of the earth, the PVCC had declared them killed in action…which made sense, seeing as how they'd been literally sucked into hell. Now their old barracks at Slumberland was occupied by one of Giovanni's Jerkop squads, and here they were, reassigned as members of Mary Lee Walsh's personal task force at Menchi-Nasu.

It was almost too much for him to comprehend.

The room gradually grew silent as the Jerkops headed off to their new sleeping quarters. Kevin stayed on the couch long after the rest of his squad had gone to sleep, thinking and thinking about what the temporal shift had done to the world he'd left. Four years…it would have seemed almost ludicrous had the three-year time rip not happened during the fall of CWCville.

Regardless of that, he was still stuck in this present for now, and the best thing he and his friends could do was acquire as much information as possible from the surviving Jerkops. Were Blanca, Emily, and Jackie still alive? Were Linda and Tammy? Just how many operatives had lost their lives in the four years since they'd entered the Warp?

The Jerkop groaned and leaned back. Thinking about this stuff was enough to drive a person insane. He knew he needed to get some sleep…maybe he'd just crash into slumber on the sofa…

Before long, Kevin lay fast asleep, dreamlessly waiting for an unfamiliar dawn, and the new world that awaited him in 2008.

* * *

**END OF PART II**


	12. Sub Episode 2

**Sub-Episode 2: "Half and Half"**

* * *

**A Sonichu Day**

**14 Brunchville Lane, CWCville, Virginia**

**10:30 a.m., March 25, 2008**

Sonichu and Rosechu awoke to the gentle _tweet-tweet_ of birds singing outside their bedroom window. Sunlight streamed into the room from outside, illuminating both lovehogs as they lay next to one another, cuddling beneath the sheets. Neither one truly wanted to be the first to speak and end their special moment together, but at last, Sonichu decided to start the day off right.

"Good morning, my lovely heartsweet," he said, and planted a soft kiss on his wife's cheek.

"Good morning, sweetbolt." Rosechu giggled and blushed as she remembered all the incredible fuzzy-wuzzies Sonichu had given her last night. Such power…such passion… She knew she'd be sore most of the day, but she didn't care. She was just happy to have a splendid husband like Sonichu and such lovely, beautiful children as Robbie, Cera, and Christine.

"I'll start breakfast, dear," she said, and rolled out of bed. She walked slowly, heel to toe, across the bedroom to the dresser and twirled around several times, making sure to give Sonichu a good long look at her perfect, naked body. She was finally beginning to feel comfortable walking around _au natural_ again, knowing that she'd taught Jason Kendrick Howell and those nasty slanderous trolls at 4-cent_garbage a lesson they wouldn't soon forget.

If she really wanted to, she could have gone the entire day without getting dressed. It was a woman's right, after all - she'd proved that last November with the all-nude photo shoot she'd carried out with her Rosechu girlfriends. No more slanderous accusations about _this_ woman having a duck, no sir! But that was beside the point. Today was a big day, and her sweetbolt had made plans to take her and the children to the park, to celebrate the good weather.

Breakfast came first, though.

Sonichu leaned back onto his pillow and watched his wife slowly pull on her panties, bra, dress, gloves, and boots. He felt like the luckiest Electric Hedgehog Pokémon in the world. His father had given him one heck of a great wife and one heck of a great life, and he wouldn't have it any other way. Now that Chris was trapped in the Time Void, though, the world just seemed a little emptier. It was Sonichu's sworn duty to make sure the homos and the jerks in the PVCC didn't get out of control while his father was away. But he couldn't do _everything_ by himself. Sonichu knew the Chaotic Combo were more than capable of handling things during those special days when he couldn't be there to zap to the extreme and save CWCville.

And today was one of them – a day to share with his wonderful family.

"I'll be in the kitchen, sweetbolt," Rosechu called to him as she opened the bedroom door and skipped out. "Would you go get the children, please? I'll call you when breakfast's ready."

Sonichu yawned and stretched. The six-hour hanky-panky marathon last night had left him just a little worn out…and _very_ hungry. He couldn't imagine how his wife must be feeling. Well, it didn't matter anyways. She'd always be ready for more, whenever and wherever he wanted it. Rosechu was an amazing girl, no doubt about it. And here she was making breakfast for the whole family again, just like she did every morning. Just like a good wife. He smiled and licked his lips as the delicious smells of fried eggs, bacon, and pancakes began filling the house.

Well, it was time to check up on the kids.

Christine was wide awake and staring into the mirror at the foot of her bed when her father walked into her room. She didn't even notice he was there until Sonichu picked her up and rocked her back and forth in his arms.

"Good mowning, Daddy!" she squealed in delight.

"Good morning, Christine!" replied her father, and gave her a quick kiss on the forehead. "Come on, let's go see what Mommy is making for us!"

"YAY! Bweakfast!" The shiny Rosey clapped her armstubs together as Sonichu carried her into the dining room and placed her in her high chair. Over by the stove, Rosechu glanced over her shoulder and smiled.

"Hello, Christine! Oh my, you look _lovely_ today!"

"Hewwo Mommy!" Christine waved to her briefly, then focused her attention onto the back of her silver spoon. Mommy was right – she _did_ look lovely today. But then again, of course, she looked lovely _every_ day. She _was_ a shiny Rosey, after all, and there was no one else as special or pretty or important as her in the whole wide world.

"Oh, did you know that we had a deep-fryer, dear?" asked Rosechu, rummaging around in the cabinet as Sonichu turned to fetch Cera.

"Yes! Don't you remember, heartsweet? Father gave it to us as a wedding present! Some of his favorite foods in the world are made with it."

"Oh no, I could never eat those." Rosechu shook her head. Salads were more the kind of food she preferred to eat. She had to keep a slim, ladylike figure, and all that fat would go straight to her hips. Then her sweetbolt wouldn't want her anymore! Of course, she still cooked all those other foods for Sonichu and the children.

Sonichu opened Cera's door to find his daughter already up and about. She had the family's copy of _The Joy of Cooking_ propped up on the foot of her bed (it was almost as tall as she was) and was trying her best to flip the pages using her armstubs.

"Well well! So that's where it went!" exclaimed Sonichu as he picked his daughter up for a hug. "Good morning, Cera!"

"Hi, Daddy!" Cera hugged his arm. "I am weading about how ta be a mommy! Mommies cook wots of things, wight?"

"They sure do, sweetie," Sonichu said with a warm smile. "And when you grow up and find a nice husband of your own, I know you will cook lots of things for him too! Your mommy certainly does."

"I wuv Mommy! An I wuv you too, Daddy."

"And I love you, Cera. Let's get something to eat!"

"YAY!"

Sonichu seated her beside Christine and went to go get Robbie. The two sisters immediately started playing patty-cake. Rosechu looked up from a huge frying pan full of pancakes, bacon, and eggs, and smiled as she watched her daughters giggling and laughing at the table.

Robbie was still fast asleep when Sonichu came to check on him. The tiny Sonee lay half-buried in a pile of blankets with a big smile on his face, alternately giggling and letting off soft little snores. It looked like he was in the middle of some wonderful flight of fancy, but now it was time to get up. They had a big day ahead of them.

"Hey, partner!" Sonichu reached down and gently shook his son. Robbie yawned and opened his eyes.

"Awwwwwww, Daddeeeeeeeeeeeee," he whined and squeezed his eyes shut again as soon as he realized what had happened. "I was having fun…we were having da funny inna dweeeeeam."

"Well that's all right, sport, because we're going to have fun today!" said Sonichu excitedly. He lifted Robbie out of the bed and squeezed him tenderly. "Y'know where we're going?"

A few seconds passed as Robbie tried his hardest to remember. Suddenly, his doughy little face lit up like a Christmas tree. "Pawk! Wer goin' ta da pawk! YAY!"

"That's right." Sonichu grinned. "And we're going there right after breakfast. Let's get you into the kitchen…I mean, the dining room!" He felt Robbie clinging to his arm in a sort of pseudo-hug as he turned and walked back to join the rest of his family. _What a spunky kid. Speedy, too. One day, he might even be as fast as me._

"Just in time, sweetbolt!" Rosechu walked over to the table as Sonichu and Robbie entered the dining room. She was wearing an apron and carried four plates piled high with delicious food. "Good morning, Robbie!"

"Good mowning, Mommy!" said Robbie. Sonichu placed him down next to Cera and gave Rosechu a peck on the cheek. She giggled and began setting out the plates in front of their respective owners. Christine got a stack of pancakes smothered in maple syrup, chocolate chips and powdered sugar, Cera got one pancake and a fried egg with lots of salt and pepper, Robbie got four pancakes, two eggs, a piece of chopped-up bacon, and a big baby bottle of CWC Cola, and Sonichu got the other bacon slices, a big stack of pancakes, and the other three eggs.

And health-conscious Rosechu had settled on a bowl of fresh fruit and a glass of skim milk.

"Kids? What do y'all say to Mommy?" asked Sonichu as he began pouring syrup onto his pancakes.

"Tank you, Mommy!" cried the three children, and hungrily started wolfing down their breakfast, making adorable _om nom nom_ noises as they ate. Rosechu smiled, speared a bit of honeydew melon on her fork, and chewed it. She gave her husband's hand a loving squeeze.

"Our precious babies," she whispered in his ear. Sonichu kissed her quickly, then unfolded the morning edition of the _CWCville News Dash_. He glanced over the headlines while eating, until something on the third page caught his eye.

**MASSACRE AT BEACH – JERKOP INVOLVEMENT SUSPECTED**

_**CWCville Beach – **__EHPF forces were dispatched to the waterfront yesterday in response to reports of violence filed late in the afternoon by a human family who happened to witness the aftermath of a horrendous crime. Four Sonees and three Roseys were found savagely mutilated, with strong evidence that several of the baby chus had been tortured first. Forensic experts have determined that the killers were human – most likely members of the Private Villa of Corrupted Citizens terrorist organization carrying out a hate crime against the chu populace._

"_It was absolutely disgusting and vile," commented Michael Snyder, a store manager at the Shopping Center who discovered the bodies with his wife and daughter during what was intended to be a fun-filled day at the beach. "The smell was horrendous, and they were all over the place. We're never coming back here until the chus learn to keep their offspring from wandering into public places by themselves." The rest of the Snyder family declined to comment._

_Suspicions that Snyder, a notorious critic of Mayor Chandler, had committed the murders himself were quickly crushed when the forensic team discovered a single red-painted maple leaf - the trademark symbol of the PVCC - embedded halfway into a Rosey's…_

"Daddy? Wassa ma-saw-cwee?" Robbie leaned over to look at the paper while sucking on his baby bottle of CWC Cola. Fortunately, the article had no pictures, so his precious little eyes were spared from any horrifying images of murdered children.

His father quickly closed the page and flipped to the comics section. "Look Robbie! Garfield!"

Robbie giggled and stuffed another mouthful of syrupy pancake down his throat. The mystery word had been completely forgotten. "Hee hee! Gawfeel's fat! Hee hee hee! Wasagnya!"

Sonichu handed the offending article to Rosechu. "GodJesus, we were just there for the Spring Break party! How could something like this even happen right where everyone could see it?"

Rosechu's face turned a few shades whiter as her eyes skimmed across the page. "Sweetbolt, I don't think we should go to the park today after all. What if the children wander off and…"

"We'll just have to make sure we keep a close eye on them," insisted Sonichu. "Don't worry, heartsweet! You know I'll always be there to zap any homos or Jerkops before they can even _think_ about hurting our kids."

Rosechu finished her fruit and began sipping uneasily at the glass of milk. Over at the other end of the table, Christine was munching her way through the fluffy stack of pancakes, always pouring a new layer of syrup over each one before she ate it so she could admire herself in the puddles of sugary liquid. And why not? She was absolutely beautiful…truly a unique and special specimen of a Rosey.

"Pwease pass da sywup, Cwistine!" said Cera sweetly.

Christine sighed in annoyance and made one feeble attempt to push the bottle to her sister, but her tiny armstubs couldn't fit around the large container. Well, at least she could see her face in the reflective plastic while she tried.

"Daddeeeeeeee, da sywup's too heawy," she complained. Sonichu gladly reached across the table and slid the syrup bottle over to Cera, who gleefully tipped it over and began saturating her own pancakes.

When they'd finally finished eating and Rosechu had cleared away the dishes like the dutiful wife she was, Sonichu opened the garage door and brought the car around to the front.

"OOOHHHHH! My axels!" he grunted in a deep voice as Rosechu carried the children out to the car and buckled each of them into their special seats. Robbie and Cera giggled at their Daddy's funny _Family Guy _joke. Christine simply gazed up into the rearview mirror in silence. Rosechu opened the front door and sat down in her passenger seat, as usual. She never needed to drive – that was what her sweetbolt was here for.

Sonichu started the car and tuned the radio to KCWC. Jamsta's voice blasted through the car, much to the delight of Cera, Robbie, and Christine.

"…_and I say again, zip-a-dee-do-dah, zip-a-dee-ay, my oh my, it's an abso-tively wonderful day! So to all you guys and gals out there with nothin' to do, now's the time to get up, get out, and get jiggy with it! Lolisa, what would you say is the best thing to do on such an amazing day?"_

"_Well Jamsta, the Park's always great for families and kids, but me? Well, you all know I was just there a few days ago, but I just can't get enough of CWCville Beach! It's got sun, sand, volleyball courts…"_

_Murdered children,_ thought Sonichu in the back of his mind as he pulled the car out into the street and began driving toward CWCville Park.

"…_and above all, don't be discouraged by what you hear on the news!"_ continued Lolisa._ "Rest assured, we've been told the EHPF is keeping a very close eye on any suspicious characters around town. And as always, everyone here at KCWC sends their hopes and prayers for the safe return of Mayor Christian Weston Chandler."_

"_Amen to that, Lolisa. Well, that's our two cents…or should I say…four-cents?"_ snickered Jamsta in an odd random-access reference to the incident in Tennessee. _"Coming up, we've got one of the Mayor's personal favorites by the one, the only, THE Britney Spears! Hope you're ready to turn up the heat, 'cause here's 'Break the Ice!'"_

"YAY!" The children began humming along in the backseat as the pop song started playing. Sonichu chuckled at their sweet little voices. For a few blissful minutes, he didn't need to worry about any nasty Jerkops or lecherous homos trying to murder or corrupt his kids. He was here, with his lovely Rosechu, his beautiful daughters, and his spunky, energetic son, about to enjoy a wonderful afternoon at the park.

CWCville Park was already full of people who had come out to enjoy this gorgeous spring day with their families and friends. Sonichu looked out the window as he pulled the car into his special reserved parking place right next to the entrance. There weren't any other Electric Hedgehog Pokémon as far as he could tell, but that was all right. He had Rosechu and three wonderful children, and that was more than enough to keep him happy for the rest of his life.

Sonichu turned off the car and unlocked the doors. "Hey everybody, we're here!"

"YAY!" cried Robbie, Cera, and Christine.

Once Rosechu had removed the kids from the the car and extracted a huge picnic basket from the trunk that she'd packed earlier, Sonichu led his family up the path to the park entrance, holding hands with his wife while she cradled Christine in her other arm and carried the basket with her free hand. On the ground, Robbie waddled in circles around Cera as they all approached the park gate. There was quite a long line of people waiting to purchase their day passes (there used to be free admission before Father started having problems managing his tugboat), but since they were the true and original Sonichu and Rosechu, the two lovehogs and their children could go right through the VIP entrance and enter CWCville Park free of charge.

Paying no regard to the hate-filled stares he was receiving from the general admission line, Sonichu sauntered right up to the electricity-sensitive gate, unlocked it with a spark, and held it open for Rosechu and the kids before following them in. He made sure to close and lock the gate behind him so no greedy jerks could sneak in without paying the tugboat tax.

"I wanna go explowing da jungal like Unca Wyuld!" said Robbie excitedly as they strolled down the path to the picnic area.

"I wanna pway on da swings!" said Cera.

Christine said nothing. Her blue eyes were firmly fixed on the small lake nearby. It was more than obvious what she wanted to do.

Sonichu laughed. "Okay, kids. We'll be at one of the picnic tables over there. Y'all be careful, now, and don't go getting in any trouble."

"We won't, Daddy," chorused the children, and immediately wandered off toward their respective destinations, giggling and cheering with delight.

"Don't forget to come back for lunch in half an hour!" Rosechu called after them. She turned to her husband concernedly. "Do you think they will be all right on their own, sweetbolt?"

"What kind of father would I be if I let my own kids get into any sort of danger?" Sonichu answered with a dismissive smile. "I am the true and original Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, remember? I'm faster than any Jerkop and I will zap them all if they try anything. Now let's go find a table, heartsweet."

At the pond, Christine slid down the grassy incline to the water's edge and shivered with delight as her feet touched the cool liquid. She waded out up to the hem of her skirt and gleefully looked down at her reflection.

There she was. Even through the ripples on the surface, she was still a beautiful, shiny Rosey, perfect and unique and special in every way. Christine loved to come down to the CWCville Park pond and look at herself for hours at a time. It was like standing in one big wet mirror. She would spend the rest of her life here, if she didn't need to eat or sleep. Christine sometimes wished that her Aunt Bubbles could teach her to swim like her when she was a Rosey, but Bubbles was always busy fighting the big mean Jerkops with her Daddy and her other aunts and uncles in the Chaotic Combo. Still, at least Christine had this pond to herself…

"_Ribbit."_

Startled, Christine looked up to see a pair of beady eyes staring up at her from the surface of the water. She toddled over a few steps to see what they were attached to and discovered a little green frog sitting on the muddy ground, half submerged in the pond. It gazed at her for a few seconds, then croaked again.

"_Ribbit."_

"Fwoggy!" cried Christine, raising her armstubs to catch it. The tiny frightened amphibian immediately darted into a patch of reeds, kicking its long legs behind it as it swam away from this giant intruder as fast as it could. Christine was not the type to give up so easily, though.

"Come back, fwoggy! I jus' wanna pway wif you!" she whined, and set off after her reluctant new friend.

From the reeds, a much larger pair of eyes watched the purple Rosey intently.

Giggling with excitement, Cera shuffled her way up to the swingset. There were a few human children playing around nearby under the watchful eyes of their parents, but none of them seemed too interested in her. She didn't mind. All she wanted was Mommy, Daddy, and her two siblings…as well as that nice boy from AnneWeston Elementary. Kevin…that's what his name was. She'd been meaning to invite him over for Christmas one of these years, but since he was Jewish, she didn't know how exactly to ask him. Maybe Jews were allergic to Christmas trees. Or cookies.

Cera reached the swing and batted it with her armstubs, trying to coax it back toward her so she could pull herself up. Wow. This was a lot harder than it looked. Normally Mommy or Daddy would have helped her into the seat, but they were over by the picnic table rubbing their faces together. She didn't want to disturb them, but on the other hand, she _really_ wanted to get on that swing.

"Unf! Ugh! Unh!" she panted, hopping up and down like a tiny pink bunny rabbit. Her stumpfeet only allowed her a limited range of movement, though, and even her mightiest leap never took her more than one inch off the ground. Eventually, the stress of her little jumps proved to be too much for her to handle. Winded, sweaty, and gasping for breath, Cera plopped herself down on the grass next to the wood chips and folded her arms in annoyance. She wanted that swing, and it wasn't budging for her like she wanted it to. She'd just sit here and wait for Mommy or Daddy or someone else to come help her, as usual…

Two children - a boy and a girl – appeared out of the blue beside Cera. Both were more than twice her size, but in human years, they couldn't have been much older than eight or nine. The girl had curly blond hair and glasses, and the boy had short black hair, but something seemed to be wrong with his skin. It was dark brown, not like _normal_ human skin.

"You're pretty, little Rosey!" exclaimed the blond girl. "What's your name?"

"Tank you," said Cera. "I'm Cewah! My Mommy an Daddy are da twoo an owiginal Sonichu an Wosechu, an my gwampa's da mayor of CWCville! Gwampa's on vacay-shun now dough."

The kids glanced at each other. Neither of them could tell what on earth she was talking about.

"Are you made of chocowate?" Cera continued, looking at the brown-skinned kid.

The boy looked confused. "No. Are you made of bubblegum?"

"Tee hee hee! You'we funny! Hee hee!" Cera giggled. "An you're all dark wike chocowate! Awe you a shiny wike my sister Chwistine?"

"What's a shiny?" asked the boy. "My skin's just like my mom and dad's is. Everyone's the same color as their mom and dad."

"My sister Chwistine's a shiny Wosey, an she's puwple! Mommy's pink wike me!" Cera beamed as the two children looked at each other in puzzlement. "Wets be fwiends! You can push me on da swing an…an I'll give you wots of Wespect Points!"

"Okay!" said the girl, and bent down to pick her up. She squeezed Cera like a big stuffed animal. "Ooo, you're cuddly! Where'd you get your pretty dress?"

"Mommy awways gets me an Chwistine da pwettyest dwesses at da Shopping Centew becawse dey wuv us an we'we pwetty Woseys," said Cera with smug pride. The girl kept hugging her, but her smile faded. She herself wore a pair of worn, dirty overalls and a yellowed shirt that her father had salvaged from a dumpster next to CWCville's giant Wal-Mart.

"Mom says we can't afford pretty dresses," she mumbled. "Not after Daddy lost his job. We've all got to live in a hotel, but sometimes we can't get in, and we have to sleep outside in the cold."

"I'm gwad my Daddy's da weader of da Cay-o-tic Combow an we get tugboats fwom da city," the spoiled Rosey replied, not even bothering to sympathize with her new friend. "Den Mommy can buy us awl da pwetty dwesses we w-"

"MARCIE! WHAT ON EARTH ARE YOU DOING WITH THAT THING?"

Cera turned to see four adult humans running towards them. Two were chocolate, like the boy. All looked unbelievably alarmed by something. Maybe there was some kind of danger she didn't know about! Well, that was okay. Daddy would come and save her and her new friends from any…

"Mommy, this is Cera," explained Marcie as the adults dashed up to her. "She's all pink like bubblegum and soft like a teddy bear. Isn't she cute?"

"Marcie…that's a Rosey," replied the normal-skinned man. "Put it down, _now_. I don't want you anywhere within twenty feet of a chu _ever again_, do you understand? Do you know how filthy those things are?"

"I am not filfy!" cried Cera indignantly. "My Mommy's da owiginal Wosechu, an she gives me baffs evewy day so I'm nice an cwean! I wanna pway with Mawcee an wide on da swings an…"

"Shut up, you disgusting furball," snarled the chocolate woman. "Your mother's a goddamn slut and your father's a murderer. Jeremy, come here. Don't touch the Rosey. Come to Mommy."

"Bye," said Jeremy as he walked over to his parents. Cera waved goodbye and smiled, oblivious to the looks of revulsion she was getting from the adult humans.

"Bye-bye, Jewemy! Are we going on da swings, Mawcee?"

"Marcie, put that Rosey down," the blond woman ordered. "Do you want to get a time-out?"

"I want to play with her!" whined the girl. "Please, Mommy?"

"NO! Now put her down or we're all going to be in…"

"WHAT ARE Y'ALL DOING TO MY DAUGHTER?" a familiar voice bellowed.

Cera squealed in delight. "Daddy!"

Robbie pushed his way through a leafy bush in the small forested area of CWCville Park, imagining he was off on one of Uncle Wild's jungle adventures. So far, there had been no savage Charmeleon clans to battle or coconut trees to climb, but he was having fun nonetheless.

"Wheeeeee!" the Sonee squealed as he struggled to heave his chubby body over a large (for him) rock. "I'm a hedgehowg, not a spidewr monkee! Vine Wip! Wazor Weaf! Psheew! Psheew!"

After a few minutes of waddling around aimlessly making similar noises, Robbie leaned against a tree to catch his breath. He was going to be as fast as Daddy one day, but for now, his woefully underdeveloped body simply couldn't handle the stress of so much physical activity. His fur was soaked in sweat, and his tiny lungs were now running at maximum overdrive. Also, he needed to pee, badly. All that CWC Cola he'd chugged down at breakfast had finally run its course.

Something small and green flashed through the undergrowth. Robbie looked down to see a tiny lizard perched on one of the tree's roots, gazing interestedly at him through yellow eyes with black slit pupils.

"Go 'way!" he cried, and waved his armstubs at the reptile. The lizard didn't move.

"I said go 'way!" Robbie repeated. "It's wude ta wawtch! Leemee 'lone!"

The lizard only licked one of its eyes and twitched its head to the side. Impatient, stressed, and desperate to relieve himself, Robbie leaned forward and felt his tiny, crooked pickle slide out of its protective flap like Daddy had taught him to do when he needed to go wee-wee or "do hanky-panky" with Rosechus once he evolved. Waddling a few steps toward the root, he grinned and unleashed a yellow stream of urine directly into the lizard's face.

"Take dat, wizzard!" he shouted.

Shaking its head from side to side, the little reptile endured the revolting blast of warm liquid for a few seconds, then hissed at its tormentor and scampered off to find a new sunning spot with fewer intrusive baby chus.

Robbie finished urinating and tilted himself back to let his pickle retract. He felt a lot better now, and anyway, it was time for more exploring! Giggling, he wiggled his stubby tail and pretended it was a big leaf-rotor like Uncle Wild used to fly around and help Daddy and the Chaotic Combo fight the big bad Jerkops.

"Wheeeeee! Wook owt, Mawy Wee Wawsh! Wook owt, Jewk-ops! Wobbie Sonee's hewe ta save da day! Wheeeeeeee!"

"_Hello, Christine."_

Christine tripped and fell forward in the shallows, missing the fleeing frog by a good six inches. Soaked and spluttering, the shiny Rosey stood back up and wiggled around in an attempt to shake herself off. Now she was all wet! She couldn't be a pretty Rosey with this nasty yucky pond water all over her!

"Who's dere?" she asked, less concerned about the voice in her head than the mess of duckweed and silt that coated the front of her dress.

"_Come closer. It's just me."_

Brushing herself off, Christine toddled toward the big clump of reeds. Something was moving inside them, making them shake back and forth. Curious, she stepped between two of the large stalks to see what was causing the peculiar motion.

"Unca Magi-Chan!" she squealed in delight as she recognized the stranger's cloven ear-tufts.

"Hello, pretty Rosey!" said Magi-Chan with a big smile. He reached out and patted Christine on the head. "How are your mommy and…heh…your _daddy_ doing?"

"Dey wuv me 'cawse I'm a shiny Wosey!" exclaimed Christine, and wrapped her armstubs around her uncle's knee. She looked up at him and batted her eyelashes, since that was what pretty Rosechus were supposed to do to handsome Sonichus. "Mommy says I'm pwetty an speshul an dere's no one ewse wike me in da wowld!"

"Mmhmm. Your mommy's right." The psychic Electric Hedgehog Pokémon smiled again, but this time, it wasn't aimed at her, and it certainly didn't seem like a loving smile…more of a knowing smirk. His eyes were lost in the distance, leering at a faraway pink shape by a picnic table. "Your mommy and I…well, we _both_ know how special you are. You sweet, sweet, beautiful little Rosey." He picked her up and hugged her close against his furry chest. "I just want you to know how much I love you, Christine. You've always been my favorite niece."

"I wuv you too, Unca Magi-Chan! You'we da best unca in da wowld!"

"Yes…" Magi-Chan held out his niece to inspect her more closely. "GodJesus, you're pretty. You're just so pretty."

"An I'm shiny!" Christine twisted around to give him a better look at her and fluffed her headspikes like Mommy always did around Daddy. She wanted Magi-Chan to admire her and appreciate her for the pretty shiny Rosey that she was.

"Yes…shiny too," her uncle finished hesitantly. "All right, Christine. I've got to get back to my job…uh…watching out for…_homos_, so you take care and tell your brother and sister I said hi." He placed her down on the shore and chuckled softly to himself, as if he knew something Christine didn't. "And be sure and tell your mommy, too."

"An Daddy!"

"Sure, that too. Goodbye, Christine." Magi-Chan placed a finger on his temple, and the air around him seemed to distort. With a frightened _ribbit_, the little frog burst out of the water and hovered over to the Rosey, borne aloft by a surge of psychic energy.

"Tank you, Unca Magi-Chan!" giggled Christine as she clamped her armstubs shut around the wriggling, terrified amphibian. "YAY! Gotcha, fwoggy! Now we can pway togevver!"

When she looked up again, the purple Sonichu was gone, vanished into thin air. Smiling, Christine waddled up the bank with her new captive, cooing softly to it.

"An now we'we gonna pway pwetty pwincess! You were da pwincess, but dat nasty wich Mawy Wee Wawsh tuwned you into a fwoggy. Now we gotta find you a pwince to bweak da spe-"

"AAAAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Christine nearly tripped in shock as an agonized scream and the sound of electricity echoed across the park. She reflexively clenched her armstubs together (ignoring a soft _crunch_ from within), shook her head in annoyance as the sound faded, then went right back to talking with her friend.

"So fiwst we gotta find you da pwince, den we gotta dwess you up wike a pwincess and make you look all pwetty! And den we…fwoggy, awe you wistening ta me? Why awe you asweep? We'we pwaying pwetty pwincess!" She stomped her foot in irritation and shook the lifeless frog up and down. "FWOGGY! WISTEN TA ME! I WANNA PWAY PWETTY PWINCESS!"

_ZAP! ZAP! ZAP!_

Cera wailed and hugged Sonichu's leg tightly as bolts of lightning leapt from Marcie to Jeremy to their parents in turn, arcing over their skin and leaving black scorch marks where they struck. The two human families shuddered violently as electricity coursed through their bodies, unable to move, unable to do anything but scream until the Thundershock attack ended and they collapsed smoking to the ground. Marcie's beautiful green eyes met the Rosey's for a split second before they melted into twin pools of pink and white jelly.

"WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" bawled Cera as her friends twitched and lay limp and still beside their parents. Sonichu let out a sigh of relief, wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, and bent down to pick up his crying daughter. She was hanging on so tight that he had to pry her armstubs loose from his leg.

"Wow, that was scary, huh Cera?" he asked comfortingly, patting her on the back. "Good thing I was here to zap those homos and niggos to the extreme! Couldn't have them hurting my little princess!"

"Dose wewen't homos an niggos, Daddy," Cera sniffed. "Dose were my fwiends an Jewemy was a shiny! They wanted ta pway with me! Why'd you kiwl dem?"

"I…I did not kill them," insisted Sonichu, turning around to conceal the bodies from Cera. "They were being bad, so I made them go to sleep. They'll wake up in a few hours and then they'll be all better! Come on, let's get you back to Mommy. It's almost lunchtime!"

"But what about Mawcee's eyes?"

"We'll get her to the hospital so they can fix her up!" Sonichu assured her, and began carrying her toward the picnic table. "Everything'll be fine, sweetie! Let's go eat, huh? Mommy made you a nice peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich!"

"YAY! FWUFFERNUDDER!"

In less than a second, all of Cera's concern for Marcie and her memories of the last few minutes had been completely replaced by joy and anticipation for her delicious sandwich.

"Oof!"

Robbie tripped and fell, tumbling out of the woods back into the grassy clearing where Daddy had said lunch would be. His tummy was growling like a rabid Mightyena, and he wanted Mommy to make him a sandwich now. All of his exploring and adventures in the park forest had nearly worn him out.

There was still a lot he could do today, though. Maybe he'd crash into slumber for an hour or two after lunch, then go and play with his sisters or eat another sandwich if he was hungry, or maybe…no, better yet, he'd ask Daddy to show him how to run without tripping so much. Daddy _never_ tripped, and he was related to Uncle Sonic, the fastest thing alive! He loved listening to his father talk about all the zappin' adventures he'd had with the Combo and Grandpa Chris, especially the stories where he ran really fast. Robbie would always cheer at those parts, and Sonichu would always smile and ruffle his son's soft little headspikes tenderly, then assure Robbie that once he grew up, he would have some zappin' adventures of his own.

For now, though, Robbie was still a few dozen yards from the picnic area, and he definitely wasn't going to get there lying down in the grass.

Groaning in hunger and exhaustion, the Sonee pushed himself back upright and began waddling across the field as quickly as his stumpfeet could carry him…which was really not that fast at all. Blades of grass brushed and poked his sides as he began picking up more and more speed. His little blue sneakers were nearly a blur now, just like Daddy's when he ran. All this hard work and all the stress was really paying off! He knew he was getting faster every day, and one day, he'd be as fast as…

"Oof!"

Robbie tripped again, sprawling forward onto his rumbling stomach. Fortunately for him, his ample supply of baby fat protected him from suffering any significant injuries. Pushing himself up once more, he looked down and noticed that his belly fur was covered in grass stains. He giggled. Now he was turning green, just like Uncle Wild was! Undiscouraged by his fall, the excited Sonee continued on his way, eager to taste the delicious sandwiches Mommy had packed for lunch. He hoped she'd brought a peanut butter and jelly one for him. He loved peanut butter and jelly.

He could see his father walking towards the table with Cera cradled in his arms. Robbie felt a little stab of frustration creep into his heart as he watched. He was tired and hungry, so why couldn't Daddy carry _him_ instead of his sister? All the stress was making him trip and fall. He just wanted to lie down and have Mommy bring him a sandwich like she did at home. But he kept on going nonetheless, spurred on by the hopes of a waiting meal. Hunger motivated Robbie more than anything else in the world, and anyway, Daddy kept telling him he was a growing boy, and he needed to eat a lot if he wanted to get as big and strong and fast as him.

Behind Sonichu, near the swingset, was a large truck with the letters EHPF stenciled on the side. More Sonichus and humans, both wearing an assortment of bulky clothing, were tossing large bags into the cargo bay. Two of the bags appeared to be much smaller than the others, but Robbie had no idea what was in them. Maybe it was food. He loved food.

"Robbie!" exclaimed Rosechu as he waddled up to her and hugged her shin. "Baby, what happened to you? You're all dirty!"

"I was explowing in da jungal, Mommy! An I wan weal fast, jus like Daddy! An den I fownd dis wizzard by a twee, an I wizzed on it, cause it was bein' wude! An den I pwetended I was Unca Wild fighting da Jewk-ops, an Mawy Wee Wawsh was dere, an da Cay-o-tic Combow, an Daddy too, an Gwampa Chwis! An den we won, an den I twied ta wun sum mowe, but I twipped a wot, an den I got all stwessed an hungwy. Can you make me a samwich?"

"Of course I can, honey!" Rosechu smiled, licked her finger, and rubbed a smudge of dirt off Robbie's face. He giggled and batted her hand away, embarrassed by this unwanted attention. Rosechu picked up her tiny son and placed him down on top of the table just as Sonichu arrived with Cera, and Christine returned from the pond with a limp little frog clutched in her armstubs.

"Hello again, heartsweet!" said Sonichu, and set his daughter next to Robbie.

"Fwuffernudder!" Cera exclaimed, and began gesturing excitedly to the picnic basket.

"Can fwoggy eat wif us?" asked Christine, and held out her new friend.

"EEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" shrieked Rosechu, and knocked the dead amphibian out of Christine's grasp with her tailbolt. "Christine, don't you ever touch those dirty things again! Come here, baby." She picked up the purple Rosey and squirted some hand sanitizer onto her armstubs. Christine giggled as Rosechu rubbed in the gel, having instantly forgotten about the frog.

"Daddeeeeeeeeee!" Robbie whined impatiently. "I'm hungwy! I wanna samwich now!"

"Here you go, partner!" Sonichu reached into the picnic basket and withdrew a peanut butter and jelly sandwich wrapped in a napkin.

"YAY!" squealed Robbie, and immediately began devouring the sandwich. His tiny toothless jaws could only bite off a little bit at a time, but he more than made up for it in the speed at which he ate. As wobbly and prone to tripping as he was when trying to run, he _was_ incredibly fast when it came to eating. Daddy had once taken him out to breakfast at Country Cookin' with Grandpa Chris, Uncle Punchy, and Aunt Angelica, and he'd devoured half a tray of sausages before Grandpa stopped him and told him that too many sausages turned Sonees into homos. At the time, Robbie had no idea what a homo even was, but he'd switched to annihilating the buffet's supply of hash browns nevertheless.

"FWUFFERNUDDER!" shouted Cera, and promptly received the food of her dreams from her mother. Christine got a sticky sweet jelly-and-honey sandwich on cinnamon raisin swirl bread. As for the two adult lovehogs, Sonichu had an enormous double-layer ham-and-cheese melt with a side of kettle chips and a bottle of CWC Cola, and Rosechu was content with a quarter of a tuna salad sandwich and a tiny salad she'd packed in a Tupperware container.

"What happened to Cera?" she asked her husband as they watched their children nibbling away at their sandwiches adorably. "I heard shouting…was she hurt?"

Sonichu shook his head and munched on a handful of chips. "Just some jerks trying to spoil her fun. I taught them a lesson."

Rosechu smiled and took his hand. "You're such a good father. I love you, sweetbolt."

Sonichu smiled and kissed his wife, then turned to Robbie. "I love you too, heartsweet. Hey partner, why don't you tell me about all the adventures you had today!"

"YEAH!"

Far across CWCville, six new bodies joined a Feeding Day pile in the abandoned zone.

* * *

**The Obligatory Beach Episode**

**CWCville, PVCC Menchi-Nasu HQ, Honey Badger barracks**

**10:30 a.m., March 24, 2008**

"Spring Break 2008. Motherfuckers." Al scoffed and switched the TV over to the _Family Guy_ channel. It was the mayor's censored version, but anything was better than watching _Mary Poppins_ again or FQX News with Greta Squall. All the networks had been covering or recapping the events of the big beach party that Chandler had thrown for his chu friends and other high-up loyalists, and it was making him absolutely sick.

"Anything on the pirate channels?" Steve asked as he crashed down on the barracks couch beside the Legend and adjusted his new eye patch. "I heard a rumor they managed to get _Robocop_."

Al flicked over to R-SIST and FMNC (Free Movie Network of CWCville). He was greeted with scenes from _Casablanca_ and _Spaceballs_ – two great classic films that had been playing steadily for the past few weeks, interspersed with a few more recent acquisitions like _300_ (Steve's current favorite) and _I Am Legend_. Smugglers regularly risked life and limb to get luxuries like non Chandler-approved DVDs and outlawed Xbox 360s (plus games) into the city, and the PVCC were always willing to help them out… if they got first pick of the merchandise, that is.

"No dice. Looks like you're going to have to go with either Rick Blaine or Lone Starr again."

"Damn." Steve mulled both options over in his mind. "Let's go with _Spaceballs_."

"Any more news on the recovery front, Al?" Zoey asked as she stepped into the barracks.

Al shook his head. "Nope. Let's not talk about it, all right? Everyone's scared enough as it is. I've heard enough talk about face-raping and Incredible Lionesses for a lifetime."

"Agreed." Steve chuckled as _Spaceball One_ entered Ludicrous Speed on the TV. "Al, I don't think you told me the schedule for today. We going out on the evening patrol slot like usual?"

"No, there seems to be a blank spot for us today, courtesy of the administration." Al leaned back and scratched his chin beneath the welding mask. "Think it's a day off. Might get some more work done on the Battle Bus, or maybe start working on that kukri longsword you wanted."

"Kukri…longsword?" Zoey looked at Steve with something resembling either awe or fear. "Steve, your regular one chops off Sparky heads. How much more of a kukri do you need?"

"One can never have enough kukri," muttered Steve. "So how'd the whole Spring Break thing go down? What happened to Silvana?"

"They took the entire beachfront," replied Al bitterly. "Couple days of the chus playing, swimming, singing, fucking, stuff like that. Master race shenanigans. Silvana tried seducing Blake, but Magi-Chan blew her cover. Figures. It all ended with some horrible concert by that abomination Chandler made out of Blanca's Jigglypuff and some loyalist pop star who dressed up to impersonate her. I heard she ran out of the White Medallion barracks five seconds after the first song started playing and they found her in the shower, crying and scrubbing at her ears."

"I don't blame her. Was that this 'War of Love' horseshit I keep hearing bits of on KCWC?"

"Why would you _ever_ want to listen to KCWC?" asked Zoey in disbelief.

"Enemy propaganda and current events," muttered Steve. "Believe me, I wish there was a better way. Well, there's TV, but I prefer having only _one_ of my six senses assaulted and raped."

"What's the sixth? Common sense?"

"No, it's comm-" Steve frowned. "Wait, how the hell did you…"

"_Attention. Attention. Albert Ledger and Steve Morrison, report immediately to the main briefing room for squad assignment."_

"About damn time," the Legend growled. Steve and Al rose to exit the room, allowing Zoey to quickly slide in and claim the entire couch for herself.

"What are you thinking it's gonna be?" asked Steve as they left the barracks, passing Amanda on their way out. "I'm guessing it's probably something about Howell or 4-cent."

"I don't know," replied Al. "Whatever it is, it's important enough to interrupt our day off. Let's go find out so I can get back to the forge."

**Ten minutes later, Menchi-Nasu practice yard**

"Here's the windup…" Jexis narrowed her eyes and tilted back her cap as she tensed himself for the throw. "And…the pitch!"

"SONEEEEEEEEEEEEEE-"

_WHACK!_

Allie swung Kuri's weighted hockey stick and caught the airborne feral a mighty blow directly to its stomach and groin. It shrieked in pain and sailed away into the sky before falling through an open window on the second floor of the high school and straight into the Red Devils' barracks.

"It's going! It's going! IT'S A HOME RUN!" she cheered, jumping for joy as both Matt and Kevin rounded the bases toward home plate. "5-2, and the Burninators take the lead!"

"QUIT HITTING FERALS INTO OUR BARRACKS, YOU IDIOTS!" one of the Red Devils yelled from the window, and chucked the Sonee back down. Matt dashed forward as he touched home plate and caught the improvised ball in his arms before it smashed to bits on the ground.

"Then CLOSE YOUR WINDOW!" Kuri shouted back.

"CHU-EATER!" yelled the Jerkop, and slammed his window shut.

Kuri chuckled. "Jealous much? Bet he's never even tasted one. I think _someone's_ asking for a little 'mystery meat' to fall into his chili tomorrow."

The Honey Badgers broke out in a fit of giggles. Serge's laughter drowned them all out. "HAHAHA! Is good, little blue girl!"

"Damn straight, Big Bear," Kuri replied with a grin. "Hey, anybody seen Al or Steve since breakfast?"

"Last I heard, they were watching TV with Zoey," Kevin said. "Hey, I think I'm up to bat now."

"Okay, but I'm giving you a curveball this time," warned Jexis as Matt tossed her the writhing Sonee. "And here's number 3 of the Burninators, Kevin Shaw, stepping up to the plate for his third at-bat today! The crowd's gone wild! Does this rookie have what it takes to…"

"Rookie? _Rookie?_ Technically, I've been here for four years," replied Kevin indignantly. "Just pitch it already, _Cadet_."

"…and Shaw appears to be trying to argue temporal physics with the opposing team's pitcher, which will most likely result in immediate disqualification if he persists," continued Jexis without pausing. "The lovely and talented pitcher Jexis readies her throw. Here's the windup…"

"Cease fire!" yelled Zoey as she walked across the practice yard toward the crude baseball diamond. "Jexis, either stow that chu or give it to Sugar. Al and Steve just called an emergency meeting in the barracks."

"What? What's it about?" asked Matt.

"Whatever it is, they're not telling me." Zoey frowned and pointed to the door. "Inside. Now."

Kevin sighed. He was getting a little annoyed with all these emergency meetings of late. First the attack on 4-cent_garbage, then the Spring Break celebration (he was still waking up in cold sweats to terrifying dreams of face-raping Rosechus in bikinis), now this. If this wasn't something really, _really_ important, he felt like he was going to go crazy.

When everyone had assembled in the Honey Badger barracks, Steve rose from his chair to face them. A grim look marred his face, and his light blue eyes seemed even colder than usual as he stared at each Jerkop in turn. Kevin noticed he was wearing his kukri.

"My friends," Steve addressed the group in a solemn voice. "As you know, we've been through many trials and tribulations over these past few months. We've literally traveled through time. We walked out of the Warp alive. And unfortunately, we've suffered a major blow to morale, and one of our finest administrators is now recovering from a near-lethal vagina to the face."

Jexis bit her lip to stifle a giggle. The actual events of Rosechu's attack on Jason Kendrick Howell were actually kind of funny out of context, but no one dared to say that out loud.

"But we must stand strong in these dark times," continued Steve. "We must look forward unflinchingly, we must brace ourselves against the coming tide, and most importantly, we must always remember that we…mmmff…we mmfffHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

Kevin and the rest of the Honey Badgers looked on in astonishment as their squad leader nearly collapsed from laughing so hard.

"Goddamn it, Steve, don't tell me you couldn't last thirty fucking seconds!" yelled Zoey as she stepped out of the sleeping room with a large duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

"Take that out of context, Zo, and that sentence might have _really_ offended me," Steve managed to reply through tears of laughter. He quickly straightened up and smiled at his squad. "Okay, as you might have heard, we've been given a special assignment. You see, in the wake of this whole Spring Break event, the entire CWCville waterfront remains unsecured by PVCC forces. Each of the squads is being sent in on a specific day to conduct…uh…_surveys_, and to secure and make use of any entertainment-related equipment the chus may have left behind."

"They're sending us to the beach?" asked Amanda flatly.

Steve glared at her. "Yes. They're sending us to the beach. Where we will _party_. Is that clear?"

"SIR, YES SIR!" Amanda stepped forward and promptly saluted, playing right along with Steve's game. "Request permission to bring alternate uniform for aquatic traversal!"

Zoey sighed and tossed Steve another duffel bag. "Yeah, we've got swimsuits for everyone. Just keep trying them on until you find one that fits. Girls, follow me to the lockers. Boys, stay here."

Matt grinned and raised his hand. "Uh, you _do _know we've all had to shower in front of ea-"

Zoey narrowed her eyes. "I said _stay here_, Matt. Don't make me pull rank on you."

"Right. Sorry."

"You heard her." Steve held up a pair of knee-length dark blue swim trunks with white trim as the women filed out of the barracks. "Dibs on these. They're mine, after all. Sorry guys, you'd better hope that none of you gets the Speedo that Zoey threw in there."

Kevin gulped. "WHAT?"

Steve grinned. "Don't worry, Al only agreed to let her do that if he got to do something along those lines for the girls. Now pack your bags for the beach. We leave in half an hour."

**45 minutes later, CWCville Beach**

The Battle Bus pulled into the deserted road next to a secluded area of the beach, belching exhaust into the cool coastal air as it rumbled and slowed to a halt in a large patch of packed dirt and gravel. The parking spot was just big enough to fit the entire vehicle, and came complete with a heavy curtain of palm trees on both sides to hide it from prying eyes.

Down on the sand, Kevin could see what looked like a volleyball court and net, a few abandoned folding chairs, and a good mess of trash strewn here and there across the beach…remnants of the debauchery that had taken place several days earlier. Apart from the rubbish, it looked like a fantastic place for the Honey Badgers to spend their own little Spring Break – a quiet strip of sand with full sun exposure and an excellent view of the ocean. Further down were the main beaches full of vacationing families, but the Jerkops had no intention of disturbing their fun.

Today was a day to spend in each other's company, a day to simply relax and forget about the horrors they'd witnessed in their time fighting for the PVCC. There were no chus to kill here, no loyalist mercenaries to fight, no Chandler, nothing but the beach and the sun and their friends.

"_Ay carumba,"_ Nick muttered to Steve as Matt pulled the brake and wheeled open the bus doors. "If you weren't squad leader, I probably would've killed you for even making this stupid deal. Hell, I might _still_ kill you. No one's gonna take me seriously anymore after today."

"For the last time, I went through them _all_," replied Steve coldly, though the hint of a smile played around the corners of his mouth. "What you get is what you get. Sorry, _amigo_. Remember, you don't _have_ to show it off." He rose from his seat and followed Jexis down the aisle toward the door.

"_Vaya al infierno_, Morrison," snarled the sniper, and grabbed his beach bag.

Kevin smelled the salty air as soon as his sandals hit the dirt. It was simply divine – a single breath free of the taint of smog or the reek of garbage that perforated so much of CWCville. True, the beach _was_ still full of garbage from the chus' Spring Break, but at least it was high tide.

Back at Menchi-Nasu, he'd managed to score a nice pair of swim trunks in a grey and white pattern, much like Steve's camo pants. Serge had claimed the absolute largest swimsuit of the group – it was obvious which one was his as soon as they'd sorted through the various swimwear – and now resembled a Russian version of the Incredible Hulk, complete with a stretchy purple swimsuit. Steve had his own blue and white swim trunks, poor Nick had landed the black Speedo, and Matt had found a simple pair of orange trunks with teal trim. As for the girls…well, Kevin had a feeling he was going to find out sooner or later. Out of all of them, he was hoping intensely that Allie had picked out something particularly nice. He knew she liked him a lot, so the odds were probably in his favor in that regard.

Right now, however, everyone was wearing their standard civilian outfits over their swimsuits for the sake of appearances. With a few exceptions, no PVCC-related gear could be displayed in a public area in non-mission circumstances. Of course, everyone was still packing their pistols and knives in concealment. Steve's kukri fit right into a specialized sheath down the left leg of his swimsuit. He planned to pass it off as a dive knife in case they were caught or questioned. Kevin possessed no such luxury, but had managed to duct tape George's hunting knife to the inside of his trunks nevertheless. It wasn't anything too fancy, but wasn't exactly uncomfortable.

"Okay everyone. Spring Break 2008 for the Honey Badgers begins here!" Al removed his welder's mask and squinted as the sunlight reached his eyes. "This is it. Remember, if you see anything, chu, human, larva, or _anything_, just do what you'd normally do if you were out on patrol. Actually, if it's a larva, either let me know or use your imaginations. Really, I'll just be happy so long as you all have fun."

"Will do." Steve smiled and wiped a bit of leftover sunscreen from his cheek. "Zo, it's your call: sandcastles or snorkeling?"

"Nice try," snorted Zoey. "You're not getting out of that rematch so easily. Oh, and don't even give me that lame excuse that you forgot the ball." She pulled a volleyball out of her beach bag and lobbed it at Steve's head. He just barely caught it before it smacked him in the face.

"If I must," sighed the Jerkop in mock dejection. "Guys, this battle is one I must face alone. Nobody can come between me…and _her_." He glared at Zoey as she set down her bag next to the volleyball court and began stripping down to reveal a bright green and blue striped bikini beneath her civilian clothes. "You heard Al. Have fun. As for me, the battlefield awaits."

Steve tucked the volleyball under his arm and strode dramatically toward what sounded like his inevitable defeat. Kevin glanced at Matt, then Allie, then Nick. "So what now?"

"Now?" Serge spread out a blanket-sized towel and sat down with a paperback copy of _Metro 2033_ in Russian. "I don't know what now. Serge will just read and wait for volleyball battle to end. Then Serge will pound puny Steve into the ground."

"Well, good luck with that," commented Matt as he pulled off his shirt and kicked his sandals away. "Damn! Hot sand. Need water. Bye!" He dashed for the water before anyone could reply and jumped right in up to his ankles with a huge splash.

"Yeah, I'm with Matt on this one."

"Same." Jexis and Amanda were already out of their PVCC outfits as soon as Matt hit the water. Amanda, perhaps ironically, had chosen a pitch-black one-piece suit. Kevin knew she was terribly bitter about Chandler's blatant racism, so this fit her persona well. The medic, similarly, had gone with a very nicely-fitting plain white bikini and, as was her tradition, had promptly borrowed a marker and drawn large red crosses on every major surface. It was a little silly, Kevin thought, but then again, what else was she going to do? Along with her scientific mind, the girl also possessed a talent for clothing design. Steve had told them that she was originally going to make them all custom combat uniforms back in 2006, but Al had immediately (and perhaps fortunately) shot down the idea when she'd presented him with one of her designs for some garish stretchy blue ensemble she called "The AquaBadgers Super Squad."

"Looks like sunny time for me," said Kuri, and began taking off her clothes like the others. She'd brought her horned hairband, but left the teal paint at Menchi-Nasu for obvious reasons…all of which involved tanning and/or swimming. Encouraged by their ice-breaking squadmates, Kevin and Allie followed suit.

Kevin tried to keep himself from sneaking a glimpse at Allie as they both undressed, and concentrated instead on removing his jeans. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Nick standing a few feet away, fully clothed, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else in the world but here.

"Are you gonna-"

"No."

"Look, maybe if-"

"NO."

"Okay." Kevin shrugged and tossed his shirt on top of his jeans. Glancing down at his chest, he noted with some satisfaction that his time in the PVCC had definitely paid off in some small ways. Gone was the starving, skinny kid who'd showed up in Slumberland one fateful night. Where once his ribs had shown through his skin, he now had the beginnings of a six-pack. There were scars, sure, but everyone had them. Each scar was simply a reminder to be more aware in the future. Allie knew that for a fact, but the horrible burn on her face hadn't dissuaded her from embracing fire as her own tool of destruction. Hundreds of ferals had learned that the hard way.

And speaking of Allie…

"Don't. Say. _Anything_," stated the young woman in a firm voice as Kevin heard her cargo pants hit the ground behind him. There was a scuffling sound as she kicked them away. "All right, get it over with. I knew you'd be waiting for this."

Kevin turned, and nearly collapsed with surprise. Two things were very clear now. One, Allie had landed the "special" present Al had inserted into the girls' bag, and two, the Legend had a wicked sense of humor.

"That…is called a microkini," Kuri explained. "You've never seen one before, huh?"

"Uh…no," replied Kevin, fighting to keep his words from turning into an incoherent butchery of the English language like the speech of a homebred Sonee or Rosey. Words simply could not describe his reaction to the thing Allie was wearing. It was magnificent…truly a work of minimalist art that pushed the limits of body exposure to the very edge. And in bright red, too.

"You enjoy yourself." Allie whirled around once, letting her long brown hair fan around in a circle. "Listen, don't get used to this. I'll admit I had my fingers crossed for you getting that Speedo, but looks like I'll have to wait for another chance."

"Odds are we'll all either be dead or heroes by then. Or both. Well, you lovebirds have fun." Kuri brushed past Kevin and turned to Nick, shooting the former soldier an evil glare. "You can't escape fate, _hombre_. I'm on to you. I'll be there when you least expect it…and _bam_." She snapped her fingers under Nick's nose. "Or…you _could_ just take the easy way out."

Kevin noticed something a little strange about the Jerkop's bikini. The black-trimmed teal cloth was extremely thin, and adhered to her incredibly well, like some new advanced "smart fabric." For the life of him, he couldn't figure out what on earth she was wearing.

"_Adios, chica."_ Nick unrolled his towel and sat down next to Serge without another word. Kuri shrugged and gave Kevin and Allie an evil smile before sauntering off to find a quiet sunny spot to draw in. She'd been making quite a lot of recent sketches of herself mutilating chu larvae, and some were really quite impressive, particularly one of her famous Cymbal Clap of Doom she'd first performed in McIntire Park.

"_What the hell kind of suit is she wearing?"_ Kevin whispered to Allie once Kuri was safely out of earshot.

Allie blinked. "What do you mean? It's paint."

Five full seconds ticked by, each one more awkward than the last.

"What."

"Waterproof paint," explained Allie. "Jexis mixed up a few colors for her – you know how she is with chemicals. I don't know what she used or how she did it, but it worked. I put a drop on my arm and couldn't wash it away, but it peels right off once it sets and you're done with…Kevin, are you even listening to me?"

Kevin was not. His brain was currently halfway between an aneurysm and the full realization of what exactly Kuri was wearing…or rather, _not_ wearing. Allie rolled her eyes, spread out a towel in the sand beneath them, and gently eased him down until they were sitting side by side.

By the time his brain returned to full functionality, Allie was leaning against him and smiling. He grinned back and draped an arm over her shoulders. Who needed Kuri and her body paint when he had this beautiful fiery girl wearing a total of about three square inches of synthetic cloth?

Steve tossed his camo pants over his shoulder and cracked his knuckles, trying to anticipate Zoey's first serve. "Okay, okay, let's end this already. Can you _please_ give me a chance this…AAAAAGHHH!"

The ball sailed over the net and nearly cracked him on the chin. It was only by sheer luck that Steve even managed to return the serve. It was even luckier that Zoey was so astonished by this that she forgot all about her turn. The volleyball hit the sand with a soft _thump_, marking the very first time Steve had ever scored the first point against his second-in-command.

"Did you just see…"

"_Don't_ say it," Zoey cautioned him, and picked up the ball. "Prepare to meet thy doom, ser."

"I think I'd actually prefer a sword fight to this," replied Steve quickly, before diving to intercept Zoey's low serve.

"Yeah, only because…" The Jerkop smacked the flying ball with the palm of her hand, sending it hurtling back toward her opponent at what seemed like MACH 2. "Only because then you'd actually have a chance of winning."

"I…actually…have a chance here," Steve retorted as he elbowed the ball back over the net. "Granted, it's about the same odds as Chandler getting laid before he turns 30, but…"

"Less talk, more spike!" yelled Zoey, and proceeded to do just that. Successfully. Steve ended up flat on his stomach in the sand, grasping for the ball resting a good inch away from his fingertips.

"Fuck," he swore, and began brushing sand out of his hair. "Should've worn my dust mask."

"Aloha, little cuz!"

Steve and Zoey both turned to see "Surfshack" Tito Makani himself bouncing toward them in striped shorts and a blue Hawaiian shirt, his orange face shiny with sweat. The fat man looked right at home in this setting on the beach. All he needed now was a band of extreme sports-loving kids to mentor and he'd be all set as far as life was concerned.

"Mr. Makani!" Steve saluted and immediately resumed trying to expel the sand from his mustache. "We didn't expect to see you out here. Are you on assignment?"

Tito shook his head. "It's just like the ancient Hawaiians say. When the seagull can no longer fly in a hurricane, he seeks the eye. With all this brouhaha about 4-cent_garbage and Spring Break, I got a little tired of all the moping. The beach…she's my home, you know. And each wave," he gestured out to sea where Amanda, Matt, and Jexis were splashing and swimming around, "is like a new breath from the ocean's lungs." He turned to Steve. "Do you surf, Mr. Morrison?"

"No…not on a surfboard, at least. My parents bought me a boogie board when I was about six."

"But you know the tricks to catch the waves, and the concept?"

"A little. I could stand a few lessons."

"Oh no you don't!" yelled Zoey from across the court. "I waited five whole weeks for this, and you're not about to…"

"Patience, little sister," said Tito, as calm as still water. "There will be more than enough time for your most epic of volleyball duels. And after all, the offer extends to you too. As the ancient Hawaiians say, three coconuts…"

"Okay, okay, Mr. Makani," Steve interjected before the administrator could continue into his examination of ancient Hawaiian sayings. "How many surfboards did you bring? We could take turns with one if…"

"You insult me, little cuz." Tito smiled. "They call me "Surfshack" Tito for a reason, you know."

Matt splashed through the surf alongside Amanda and Jexis, laughing as a strong wave nearly knocked him off his feet. It was a good day for wave jumping – that much was certain. He'd been hoping that Kevin and Allie would want to join him, but they seemed content with cuddling together back on the beach. Anyway, he had two lovely ladies to keep him company, and there was _nothing_ wrong with that.

"Get ready!" he shouted as a colossal wave built in the distance and began thundering toward them. "We're going under this one!"

"Oh, hell no," said Jexis, and turned to leave. Amanda and Matt each caught one of her arms and forced her around so she was facing the oncoming wave. "Hey! Let me go! Let me-"

_SPLASH!_ The wave struck with what seemed like the force of a car crash, immediately knocking all three Jerkops askew and drenching them from head to toe in salt water and seaweed. Matt held his breath as long as he could, then felt for the sandy bottom and swam for shore. He could see a Goldeen darting away beneath him, shimmering in the sunlight. Absolutely beautiful.

Matt had only gone a few steps when his foot hit what felt like a huge rock. Stumbling forward in pain, he cursed and grabbed the offending object with both hands, ready to chuck it as far as he could into the deep water.

"Squirtle," said the rock.

The Jerkop immediately dropped it onto the sand with a yell of surprise and watched as a Squirtle's head, arms, and legs emerged. It looked incredibly relaxed, yet its eyes were red and bloodshot. He must have disturbed it while it was sleeping or something.

"Hey, little guy!" he said, and reached down gently toward the small Pokémon.

"Squirtle." The Squirtle yawned and retracted its arms. A huge lopsided grin spread across its face as it retrieved a long cylindrical object and a small plastic bag of plants from the interior of its shell. It was amazing all of that could fit inside the diminutive animal. "Squir-squirtle?"

"You've gotta be fuckin' kidding," said Matt, and sat down beside it. The Squirtle twisted open the bong and inserted a large clump of fresh marijuana, a difficult task for something with such stubby fingers. Once the weed had been added, it withdrew a Zippo lighter and snapped a flame beneath the bulb. Soon the water was bubbling. The Squirtle closed its mouth over the end of the bong and took a deep breath, then passed the whole thing over to Matt. "Squiiiiiiiiirrrrtttllllee…"

"I hear you there, my friend," replied the Jerkop as he filled his lungs with smoke. It was smooth stuff, incredibly smooth, even better than all the grass he and Jake had smoked during their lunch breaks at the CWCville Wal-mart. One of their coworkers, a long-haired artist named David, had been more than happy to supply them. This, though…this was something else.

"Whoa," breathed Matt, and exhaled the smoke through his nostrils. The familiar twisted colors and amplified sounds of an awesome high were beginning to return. "Feels…_good_, man."

The Squirtle yawned again and took another hit from the bong.

Kuri skipped down the beach without a care in the world, humming to herself and smiling as she felt the warm sun against her skin. The waterproof painted-on bikini had been Jexis's greatest idea ever. Now there was nothing standing between her and the absolute best tan she could imagine. The sea air was nice, too. It helped her creativity, and anyway, she'd been wanting to work on this drawing she'd made earlier of Sugarplum Fury ripping a feral Rosey in half.

A few yards further, the Jerkop found a nice sunny spot, spread out her towel, and sat down cross-legged above the warm sand. Flipping through her sketchbook, she found the unfinished drawing and began shading in Sugar's powerful jaws. The feral victim was only a doodle for now, but oh, when she finished…

Kuri snickered and lay forward on her stomach, stretching her legs out for maximum sun exposure. She was so engrossed in her activity that she almost didn't spot the three pink and four yellow blobs making their way across the sand towards her. Only when their annoyingly high-pitched voices reached her ears did she realize exactly what she'd been missing.

"Sonee!"

"Gaa-gaa!"

"Wosey!"

"Goo-goo!"

Kuri scrambled to her feet and instinctively covered up. She was still adapting to the newfound freedom of her paint-bikini. However, any nervous tension instantly dissipated as soon as she spotted the crowd of ferals. The expression of panic and surprise on her face quickly gave way to her trademark evil grin. She reflexively reached for the tekko-kagi on her belt, but found nothing.

Oh, right. She wasn't wearing a belt.

A Sonee tripped in the sand as it waddled up to her and hugged her bare leg. "Sonee! Goo-goo!"

"Hey there!" Kuri smiled playfully and picked up the nearest Rosey, cuddling it in her arms. "Who wants to go meet some new friends?"

"YAY!" cried the ferals, completely unaware of just how "friendly" Kuri's squadmates were towards their particular species.

Kevin looked up from the morning edition of the _CWCville News Dash_ and stared at Matt, Jexis, and Amanda. They'd all assembled by a rock or something, and were passing a small object around. Maybe they'd found a conch shell, and were blowing into it.

"Hey, I'm still not feeling that lotion," Allie reminded him.

"Right." Kevin squeezed some sunscreen into his hand and resumed rubbing it into Allie's back. He was trying not to get too distracted by the many scars that crisscrossed her skin, or by her intensely red, incredibly small microkini. So far, he wasn't doing too well on that front.

"Want to hit the water in a few minutes?" he suggested. "Can't leave Matt, right? Us Shopping Center veterans have to stick together, huh?"

"Mmmmm…" Allie sighed contentedly. "You know what, I think he'll be fine where he is. Now get my shoulders and neck, too. Here, I'll help." She reached up between her shoulder blades and undid the string, giving her squadmate full access to her bare back.

If Kevin had been an anime character, blood would have now been spurting out of his nose at close to 500 feet per second.

"Ahem."

Kevin looked up and nearly squeezed the entire bottle onto Allie's back in shock. Kuri had returned with a whole group of feral Sonees and Roseys that were now waddling after her, cooing and giggling and trying to hug her bare legs. Somehow, she'd managed to convince them to trust her, that she'd be a good provider for them, that they didn't have to worry about anything as long as they had her to take care of them.

"Wosey!" cried the pink chu in her arms.

"Do I even want to know?" asked Allie, and quickly tied her top back on.

"There's seven here," Kuri explained with a vicious smile. "I figure that's more than enough for all of us. Except you." She pointed at Nick. "You don't get any."

"What? Why?"

"You know damn well why." The Jerkop herded the ferals behind her. "Tell you what. I'll make you a trade. A Sonee…" She bent down and picked up a giggling yellow larva with her free hand, "…for a Speedo. Your choice. They're gonna go fast, I can pretty much guarantee that."

Nick looked like he would have been quite content to strangle Kuri then and there. His eye twitched involuntarily. Kuri caught on and started waving the Sonee back and forth in front of his face, tempting him as the oblivious chu clapped its armstubs together and squealed in delight.

"I'm waaaaaaiiiiiiitiiiiing…" she teased.

"FINE!" shouted Nick, and began unbuttoning his shirt with extreme reluctance.

"Don't kill tiny shock-pigs here," Serge grunted, not even looking up from _Metro 2033_. "Go feed them to sharks or something."

"That's…Serge, that's _brilliant_," Kevin complimented the Russian. "Did anyone bring a fishing pole?"

Steve paddled after Tito, bracing himself as each small wave rocked him and his new surfboard. The water wasn't too cold…in fact, it was surprisingly warm for March. The paddling part of surfing was pretty easy so far, especially since the Jerkop was a particularly good swimmer. It was the whole balancing act that worried him.

"Far enough, little cuz!" the fat Hawaiian man yelled over the crashing surf. "Now ease up onto your knees and keep the board angled with the swell! The ancient Hawaiians have a saying; before a seagull learns to fly, he must first learn to walk."

Steve did his best to ignore the latter half of Tito's advice and pushed himself up off the surfboard. He nearly lost his balance and toppled over when a school of Goldeen passed beneath him, reflecting the sunlight right into his eyes with their shimmering scales.

"Relax," laughed Zoey as she pulled her own board up alongside him. "Just stay focused. It's not that hard."

"Says the woman with two working eyes," muttered Steve, and unconsciously touched the black patch that now covered his right eye socket. Learning to live half-blind was tough, but not impossible. If anything, his left eye had to do double the work now, and his vision had actually improved significantly over the last two months. So much, in fact, that he could just barely make out some rather interesting activity on the beach…

"Ferals," he growled.

"What?" Zoey paddled a few feet closer.

"We've got ferals!" The Jerkop pointed to a cluster of pink and yellow blobs wandering around on the Honey Badgers' little private beach. "Okay Mr. Makani, I think we're gonna have to cut the lesson short. Or…" A grin spread across Steve's face as he glanced back at a sizable oncoming wave. "Scratch that. I've got a better idea."

"Wosey! Hee hee hee!"

"Gaa-gaa! Sonee!"

"Hurry…the fuck…_up_," Nick growled as Kevin rummaged through Steve's beach bag for the rod and reel he'd packed. The ferals had lost interest in their new friends already, and were doing a marvelous job of annoying the living hell out of everyone within earshot of their insipid squeals and babbling. Even Serge looked like he wanted to just step on the little chus and crush them into the sand, if only to silence them once and for all.

"Aww, don't be like that," teased Kuri. "It looks good on you. Really."

"I don't know who I'm going to kill first, you, Zoey, or Steve," replied the sniper irritably. "Where the hell did Zoey get this thing, anyway?"

"I don't think _she_ found it," Kevin spoke up. He had no intention of fanning the flames any further. Nick was already teetering on the edge of a complete meltdown, and the Speedo wasn't helping things much. "Hey! I found his iPod." He held up the white MP3 player and a pair of portable battery-powered speakers, then tossed them to Allie. "See if he's got the _Mary Poppins_ soundtrack on it or something. That'll get their attention."

"Beatles…Led Zeppelin…Rolling Stones…Journey…more Led Zeppelin…okay, I got it!" Allie plugged in the iPod and set it up near the ferals, then switched on "Feed the Birds". As the song began playing, the seven Sonees and Roseys stopped their pointless cavorting and waddled over to the strange music box they immediately decided they liked a lot, since it was playing those fun noises that were biologically ingrained into their subconscious to release floods of endorphins every time they heard it.

"Good call." Kuri glanced up at a few circling Wingulls and a large Pelipper. "Did you pick that song on purpose? Because I just got an _awesome_ idea."

"I like where this is going," chuckled Kevin as he reached back into Steve's beach bag for a package of tortilla chips. "I don't think the fishing pole's in here. Check Zoey's." He stood up and popped the chips open, then motioned to Kuri to come with him. While Allie and Nick rummaged through the other bag and Serge continued reading, the two Jerkops made their way across the beach toward the water. Kuri had picked up the speakers so the ferals would follow the hypnotic music all the way to their inevitable doom.

_Feed the birds, tuppence a bag.  
Tuppence, tuppence, tuppence a bag.  
"Feed the birds," that's what she cries.  
While overhead, her birds fill the skies._

"Wiiiiingull! Wiiiiiingull!" shrieked the small bird Pokémon as they noticed the newcomers down below on the sand. Smiling, Kevin reached inside the bag, crushed up a handful of chips, and scattered them across the beach. The Wingulls immediately locked on to the falling pieces and dove eagerly, snapping up the crunchy treats with glee.

"Wosey!" a Rosey cried happily as she waddled toward the hungry creatures. "Goo-goo! Wosey wosey!" To her, the winged Pokémon were just some new friends to play with and hug and…

Kevin flung another handful of crushed chips, dotting the Rosey with salty bits of fried tortilla. The Wingulls' reactions were immediate, swift, and unbelievably brutal.

"WING! WINGULL!"

"GOO-GOO!" the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon squealed, clutching her bleeding armstub where one of the Wingulls had pecked her. "WOSEY! WAAAAAH!"

Before the Rosey could even realize what was happening, another Wingull landed beside her and snapped out with its hooked beak, tearing a tiny piece of flesh and a soft spike from her misshapen head. The little chu cried and wailed as the hungry Pokémon converged on her.

"WOSEEEEEEEY! WOSEEEEEEEY!"

Kevin grinned as a vicious Wingull plucked out one of the Rosey's soulless eyes and swallowed it whole like a huge bloody green grape. Flapping and biting and ripping at her chubby unprotected head and torso, the Wingulls paid no heed to her piteous screams, but only redoubled their efforts. It wasn't long before the sand around the melee began to turn red.

By now, the other hedgehog larvae had gotten the hint that these new friends weren't as fun as they'd originally thought, and were now slowly moving backward, whimpering in fear as they watched their playmate being torn to pieces under the cruel beaks of the aerial scavengers. One Sonee tripped, heaved its dense body up off the sand, and waddled away with a panicked cry of "SONEE!"

"Where do you think _you're_ going?" sneered Allie as she dug her foot under the fleeing chu and launched it up as if it were a big fuzzy soccer ball. The Sonee squealed as it flew through the air and landed right in her waiting arms. Upon realizing the Jerkop hadn't intended to kill it with the kick, it let out a relieved "Goo-goo!" and hugged her wrist.

Allie grinned and brandished a large fishhook attached to a rod. "Open wide, widdle bay-bee!"

"NEEEEEEEEEEUGHGHHUGHAAAAAHHH H!" the Sonee bawled as its captor forced its little jaws open and inserted the hook right through the side of its face. Blood squirted into its mouth, and Allie made sure to twist the barbed metal around enough to shred one cheek to ribbons. Undaunted, she merely removed the hook and pierced the larva's other cheek, prompting a fresh gout of blood from the little creature's mouth. Allie made sure the line could bear its weight, then dropped her new live bait and let it hang from the rod by its mutilated face. It screamed again and again, but to no avail.

While Kevin, Nick, and Kuri rounded up and captured the other five chus, Allie strode to the edge of the water, let out a few dozen feet of line, then punted her hooked Sonee into the air.

"GOO-GEEEEEEEEE!" it shrieked as it sailed up in an arc and dropped, hitting the water with a huge splash. Its considerable fat reserves outmatched the weight of its unnaturally dense body, keeping the Sonee afloat until something decided to take the bait. The blood pouring from its mouth would quickly draw the attention of any nearby sea life, and Allie personally hoped that a few Sharpedoes were swimming in the area.

Meanwhile, Kevin grabbed up a Rosey with one hand and began digging a hole in the sand with his other. Kuri quickly arrived with a wailing Sonee and helped him. As the little chus struggled and beat at their hands, the Jerkops stuffed them right into the makeshift pit, then just let them sit there and try to pull themselves out. They couldn't jump more than half an inch, and with their legless feet and fingerless armstubs, there was no way those two were escaping any time soon.

"Okay. That makes one for each of us," Kevin said, looking back to where Nick had trapped the three remaining larvae. "What do you want to do with them?"

"How about giving _us_ a few?" yelled Zoey as she and Steve hurried up the beach with their surfboards tucked under their arms. Surfshack Tito had stayed out on the water to catch some more big swells.

"There's two in here!" Kuri waved the squad leaders over and grinned. "You seriously think we'd ever let you miss out on all the fun?"

"I don't know. I'd be tempted if I were you," laughed Steve as he knelt down and snatched the Sonee out of the pit. It fired off a Spark at his fingers, but the Jerkop remained unaffected. "And I know just what to do with this little bastard." He glanced up. "Hey, Nick. Nice Speedo."

"Shut up," growled the sniper, and tossed a Rosey to Kevin.

"Squiiiiirrrrrtlllllllle."

"I know, right?" slurred Matt as he stared at his hand and watched the fingers twist and fragment and multiply of their own accord. The world around him looked like the last fifteen minutes of _2001: A Space Odyssey_ – a shifting fireworks display of blurry colors, strange distorted sounds out of nowhere, and a constantly changing landscape of time and space.

Truly, this was the absolute _best_ high he'd ever had.

"Wherrrrrrre did he get this stuff?" giggled Jexis at alternating speeds. She'd been tossing handfuls of dry sand into the air and trying to swat them away when they came down.

"Dunno. Probably…whoa… Guys, you seein' this?" Amanda sat up and hazily brushed the sand from her swimsuit. "We're on the fuckin' moon."

Matt blinked, and the beach instantly changed to a grey lunar landscape, dotted with craters and large dusty boulders. Above, the blackness and an endless curtain of stars stretched off infinitely into the distance. The Jerkops and their Squirtle friend appeared to be alone at first, but when Matt blinked again, his eyes and brain were instantly assaulted with a flurry of strange and inconceivable images and faces.

"Holy Jesus," he muttered. "What are these goddamn animals?"

A floating whale swam across the star field and jettisoned what seemed to be a massive boulder from beneath its fin. Matt raised his arms to shield himself…not that it would have done any good, of course. The rock smashed into him, but no one was harmed. Instead, the scene had changed, and now a slew of figures floated in front of him in various states of reality. He recognized a few of them…Allison Amber, that Team Rocket scientist Bill, the Metal Sonichu prototype…and also a few more whose names and identities escaped him.

Matt glanced around at his comrades. Jexis had transformed into a large bloody Band-Aid, while Amanda now looked as if she was entirely made out of exploding gunpowder. Somehow, the explosions were trapped within her outline, but they kept bursting nonetheless. The Squirtle was still a Squirtle, and yawning.

"Anoz aelc amulp oerc ikambol ah ah?" asked a PVCC logo as it drifted by. It sounded like it was speaking in Steve's voice.

"No thanks," replied Jexis, and promptly turned into a giant keyblade. "I just ate."

Matt was getting genuinely scared now. The moon had suddenly transformed itself into a plane of existence made entirely out of Nutella, and his hands and feet were now stuck in the delicious hazelnutty chocolate quagmire. Ninety-one gems appeared one by one and exploded into a shower of glistening rainbow-colored shards, all in less than a second. There was no escaping the madness. He just had to take it as it came.

A large cheeseburger with a "Big Kahuna Burger" label and a Hawaiian floral print wrapper sprouted from nowhere and hovered in front of him. Matt felt his stomach roar as an incredible case of the munchies slammed into him with the force of an aircraft carrier ramming a speedboat. Drooling, he reached out and grabbed the saucy, juicy burger. It smelled absolutely delicious – smoky and savory and a little spicy, the kind him and Jake used to cook up in their dorm when they'd been roommates back in college.

"Mmmmm…" Matt sighed, and sank his teeth into the tasty burger. Barbecue sauce squirted into his mouth, saturating it with a tangy taste. The meat was rare and bloody, just the way he liked it.

"WOSEEEEEEEY!" the bun cried in terror.

"Uh…Matt, are you okay?" asked Kevin as Matt snatched the Rosey away from him and began chowing down, ripping its chubby belly open with his bare teeth, pulling out intestines and internal organs with savage glee, and devouring them whole as the disemboweled hoglet screeched and thrashed and beat at his hands with her useless little armstubs.

_CRUNCH! RRRIP! RRRIP! CRUNCH! SQUISH!"_

"SEEEEE! AAAUGHHH! SEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"Mmmmf-mmmf-mmmmf-mmmmff!" Matt replied through a mouthful of raw, dripping flesh. Kevin noticed his eyes were completely bloodshot, and wisely backed away. The Squirtle offered him a pull from its bong, but he declined. Whatever kind of high Matt had just experienced, the aftereffects were catching up to him with a vengeance. Behind him, Jexis rolled around in the sand, giggling and trying unsuccessfully to backstroke through it. Amanda was in the process of writing "BMP LIVES" slogans in the wet sand near the water wherever she could.

_Whatever that means,_ thought the Jerkop to himself as Matt sucked one of the Rosey's eyeballs clean out of its socket and chewed it thoughtfully as if it were a gumball. Kevin had a feeling that once Matt came around, he'd probably want to drink about three bottles of Listerine and wash his mouth out with OxiClean to kill any bacteria that he was currently ingesting. Jexis normally would have warned him, but…well…she was currently attempting to bury herself in the sand while yelling something about aquatic bats everywhere.

Somewhat thankful that he had never attempted a high quite on this scale, Kevin turned and left his three tripping squadmates to their own devices. Steve and Zoey were headed back to the volleyball court with their Sonee and Rosey, Kuri looked like she was digging a large trench next to her trapped Sonee, and Nick was…

"GOO-GEEEEE! SONEEEEEE!"

Kevin blinked, and felt his jaw drop open a few millimeters. Of all the crazy larval torture methods he'd witnessed during the (temporally altered) decade he'd spent in CWCville, this one landed somewhere in the top ten list. Nick had buried his Sonee up to its flabby neck, trapping it in an inescapable prison of tightly-packed sand. Sitting cross-legged in front of the screeching feral, he was now applying generous amounts of some mysterious red liquid to its bulbous eyes and harelip mouth. Whatever the stuff was, it was making the Sonee scream more loudly than any other chu he'd ever heard. It thrashed its misshapen head about wildly, slamming it again and again into the sand as it wept and bawled and screeched in extreme pain and discomfort.

Only when Kevin walked over to investigate did he realize what Nick was using on the chu. The spicy odor pierced his nostrils before he knew what was happening, and he felt a few tears well up in his eyes. The Speedo-clad sniper didn't seem to be affected in the slightest by his insanely powerful hot sauce…maybe that was because he'd built up a tolerance for it over the years. Kevin glanced at the label. **"BREAK YOU DEAD" SAUCE – WARNING: CONTAINS NAGA VIPER CHILIES AND PURE CAPSAICIN EXTRACT. MAY CAUSE BLINDNESS AND DEATH."**

"Do I even want to-" he began.

Nick smiled wickedly. "No."

Kevin watched the feral larva writhe around and shriek for another half a minute, then hastily retreated out of the spice cloud's range. His eyes were watering, anyway, and there was much more attractive company to be found down by the water.

Allie was still toying around with her Sonee-baited fishing rod when Kevin arrived and sat down beside her. Out in the middle of the ocean, the hooked chu screamed and beat at the water with its armstubs in a pathetic attempt to swim away. As it rolled over, Kevin could see its bare stumpfeet waddling like crazy, kicking and kicking to absolutely no avail.

"Why do they even bother?" he mused as he grabbed the bottle of sunscreen and began applying another layer to his arms and shoulders.

"They're just too stubborn to accept hardships," replied Allie, and reeled in a few feet of line. "At least these ones actually try. Homebred larvae probably would've given up by now."

"When do you think we'll get to kill some?"

"Homebreds?"

Kevin nodded. "Yeah. It's not like Walsh to give us so many extermination missions when we're the ones who are gonna take out the royal family."

"It shouldn't be too long," Allie assured him. "We've only been…well, _back_…for two months. She's probably just trying to ease us back into the game."

"Yeah, probably," sighed Kevin, and leaned back to let the sun bake his chest and stomach.

The Jerkops sat together in silence for a few minutes, listening to the crash of waves and the distant screams and cries of ferals in pain. Kevin nearly dozed off himself. This Spring Break was exactly what the Honey Badgers had needed for a long, long time – a day of peace in the midst of so much chaos. The nightmarish memories of their journey through that hellish chaos dimension and their abrupt leap forward in time still hadn't dissipated, and several of the younger and less desensitized squad members like Jexis and Matt were experiencing mental trauma and insomnia from the horrors of the Warp.

A whole day of R&R couldn't hurt.

Out on the water, the tip of a black fin broke the surface and sped toward the floundering Sonee. Allie hastily grabbed Kevin's hand with a gasp of excitement as the predatory Pokémon zeroed in on its pathetic prey like a living guided missile made out of teeth and horrific brutality.

"SHARPEDO!"

"SONEEEEEEEEE!"

_CRUNCH!_ In a frenzied flash of teeth, the Sonee had been reduced to a shredded blue sneaker, a few clumps of yellow fur, and three soft headspikes bobbing on the waves and surrounded by an expanding cloud of blood. Above, a few circling Wingulls folded their wings and dove, seeking any edible scraps of meat they could salvage in the aftermath of the Sharpedo's feast.

"Catch of the day," remarked Kevin, and squeezed Allie's hand. She snuggled against him, grinning as they sat there and watched the bird Pokémon fight over the last pieces of the devoured Sonee.

"Look, it's not that I don't think you'd be tasty enough in the raw," Kuri remarked casually as she piled dry driftwood and bundles of sea grass at the bottom of the stone-lined trench she'd been digging. "It's just…well, I really like to cook. And I _really_ like to cook Sonees and Roseys. See, I've been experimenting with quite a few of your little friends over the years, and I've never tried out this particular method before."

"Goo-goo!"

Kuri sighed and flicked a bit of sand down into the pit at her captured Sonee. It squealed and tripped over its own feet, then clumsily righted itself and tried to rub the grit out of its irritated eyes. Without fingers, though, the attempt proved fruitless.

"That's what you get for staring at me so much, you little pedofork," the Jerkop admonished the whining larva, and stuck out her tongue in mock annoyance. She glanced down and rubbed one of the "strings" on her paint bikini. "Well, let's hope Jexis made this stuff heatproof, or things are gonna get awkward fast." Grabbing another handful of driftwood twigs, she placed them between the larger logs so the fire would spread more evenly. Down in its prison pit, the Sonee couldn't see what she was doing, but it knew in its intellectually-stunted little mind that whatever Kuri had planned was sure to result in more Prickly-Wicklies…lots and lots of Prickly-Wicklies.

"Soneeee…" it whined, and tried to grip the sandy wall with its armstubs and static cling. Maybe he could climb out while the big mean lady was distracted and make a speedy dash for freedom once he escaped from the pit. That was what spunky heroes always did, and the other Sonees and Roseys were sure to admire him for such a daring…

"Goo-GMMPHH!" cried the hapless feral as a huge clump of dry sand tore loose of the pit wall and burst all over its face. About half of it landed in its mouth and eyes, prompting a fresh wave of tears and helpless gagging that sounded more like "kaf kaf kaf" than actual coughs. Kuri snickered and leaned over the edge of the pit to watch her prisoner vomiting up what looked like a slimy mass of half-digested candy, some meat scraps, and about three tablespoons of sand.

"WUUUUGGGHHH! HURRGH! HU-HURRRRGH!"

"Oh, we have fun, don't we?" she giggled to herself, and flicked her Zippo lighter against the dry grass in the cooking trench. The flames spread quickly, devouring the grass clumps and kindling in less than a minute and working their way over to the big logs. Working carefully, Kuri heaved a few smooth, flat stones onto the growing inferno and stepped back as the fire began licking hungrily at the large rocks.

It wouldn't be long now. A pity they'd exhausted their supply of ferals so quickly and eagerly…if she had more, she could give the entire squad a New England style chu-bake the likes of which they'd probably never…

"Wosey!"

"Sonee!"

"Nee! Goo-goo!"

"Special…ugh…delivery!" announced Al as he emerged from out of a thicket of tall beach grass with Sugarplum Fury following eagerly behind. Unbelievably, the Legend had somehow obtained a rusty wheelbarrow, and through reasons unknown to anyone but him and the honey badger, had captured and collected a full thirteen feral larvae. The dirty Sonees and Roseys squirmed around uncomfortably in the wheelbarrow's rusty bin, making all sorts of annoying stereotypical baby sounds and fighting to push each other away using their useless limbs.

Kuri gaped. "Wha…"

"Sugar found them rooting around for candy and CWC Cola in a garbage can," explained Al, and promptly dumped the wheelbarrow's squealing passengers into the pit, right on top of the unfortunate Sonee. The little chu only had time to let out a single shriek of terror before his comrades piled onto him in an blobby avalanche of pink and yellow bodies, pinning him against the wet floor of his sandy prison. His left armstub snapped like a twig, but with a mouthful of wet grit and tiny wriggling marine worms, all he could manage was a bubbly "MMMMPHHH!" Unable to move and racked with pain, the Sonee promptly evacuated his bowels as the immense weight of the larva pile forced him further and further into the ground.

"Wow. I…" Kuri was scarcely able to believe this incredible good fortune. "I was gonna…you want me to throw a couple on for you?"

"Sure." Al gazed down into the pit and drew his knife. Grabbing a Rosey, he yanked the screaming feral out of her prison and plunged the tip of the blade into one soulless green eye, then the other.

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!"

"There you go!" chuckled Al, and handed the Rosey over for inspection. The letters A and L had been carved right into her eyeballs. Kuri burst out laughing and nearly dropped the struggling chu right into the cooking trench, but saved it at the last second by grabbing its befouled skirt and tossing it back to join its fellow prisoners in the pit.

"So that's one for you, two for me, and two for Steve," she stated, counting off each order on her hand. "That leaves…nine."

"Grrowwr," added Sugarplum Fury.

"Eight," Kuri hastily corrected herself and gingerly patted the honey badger. Miraculously, Sugar didn't lash out or try to bite her like usual. Maybe, at the very least, she was finding some value in the culinary abilities of her Jerkop "rival". "So what do you want to do with the others?"

Al smiled. "Feeding frenzy."

"Look, I'm not saying it's gonna work," insisted Steve as he and Zoey neared the volleyball court with their struggling chu captives tucked under their arms. "I just want to see what happens. That's why I've been watching all the Spring Break coverage – I think they might have a psychological weakness to…"

"I'm still not going to do _that_, you pervert!" laughed Zoey, and kicked sand at his legs. "Make up any lame excuse you want – I am _not_ flashing that little rat." She pointed at the whining Sonee that Steve was carrying.

"If I pull rank, you'll have to," continued the squad leader with a sly grin.

"Don't even _think_ about it."

"Okay, we'll compromise. If I manage to score another time…"

Zoey started to reply, then hesitated for a few moments. "Hmm…you know what, given your track record, that's actually not a bad idea. Yeah, I'll agree to that." She snickered. "Good luck."

"Shake on it." Steve held out his free hand, and Zoey accepted with a firm handshake. "Good. Now what I _didn't_ tell you is…there's a little catch."

"_What?_ No!"

"Here, give me that Rosey. I promise, you're going to _love _this."

"Wosey! Goo-gaa! See! Seeee!"

"Shut up," Zoey growled as she handed the chu larva over and accepted Steve's Sonee. "What are you gonna do with her, turn her into a volleyball or…"

_PSSSSSSHHHHHHHTTTTTTT!_ A rush of escaping air sounded from the volleyball as Steve pried out its rubber seal with his kukri, then squeezed it flat as a pancake.

"I'm gonna stop talking now," finished Zoey, and sat down beside Steve. Reaching into the pocket of his swim trunks, the blond Jerkop withdrew a tiny hand pump and screwed it into the open hole of the volleyball so it was ready for reinflation. Grinning, he turned to the Rosey.

"Does da pwetty widdle bay-bee wanna tasty tweat?" he cooed in a disgusting baby-talk voice that suited his personality about as much as logic and reason suited Christian Weston Chandler. "Aww, does da pwecious widdle Wosey wanna twy da big candy ball?"

The baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon stared up at him blankly and scratched her headspikes in confusion. Steve sighed and produced a Jolly Rancher from his pocket. He pointed at the wrapped candy, then to the deflated volleyball, then to the Rosey, then to the volleyball again.

"Wosey! YAY!" squealed the Rosey as her slow-in-the-mind brain finally made the false connection that the volleyball obviously had to be candy if the big one-eyed stranger said it was! She began bouncing up and down excitedly, waving her armstubs around like uncooked pieces of hot dog and licking her little harelips with anticipation. "Wosey! Heeheeheeheehee! YAY!"

"Finally!" muttered Steve, and picked up the deflated ball. "Down the hatch!"

"Heeheeheehee-GUGUGHGHGHGUGUUGHGGHGGHH!" screamed the Rosey as Steve pried her tiny toothless mouth open with two fingers and began stuffing the limp, sand-encrusted volleyball straight down her throat. She choked and gasped and thumped her armstubs against her aggressor's fingers, but the Jerkop undauntedly kept forcing more and more of the ball into her massive digestive tract. Her face was turning from pink to a nauseated blue as she desperately fought for breath.

"Oh my! I think the widdle bay-bee can't breathe! Hold on, widdle Wosey!" Steve grabbed the hand pump and began heaving the handle up and down, sending some much-needed air into the ball. Bones crunched and ribs shattered, prompting louder and louder shrieks of pain from the agonized Rosey as her body began stretching and growing into a fuzzy pink sphere with armstubs, stumpfeet, a tail, and a head. Her skirt stretched, and ripped apart, fluttering to the ground as her belly expanded outwards. The inflating ball was taking up all the space in her torso, and Steve knew that it wouldn't be too long before…

_SQUISH! SPLUTCH! SPLAT!_ A massive explosion of coiled, bloody intestines and slimy malformed organs splattered out of the Rosey's rapidly-dilating butthole along with a thick gout of blood, fecal matter, and bile, all forced out by the rapidly-expanding volleyball inside her body cavity. Somehow, the chu survived having the majority of her insides squished out, and continued on shrieking and screeching with horrible pain until both of her lungs collapsed and were flattened against her smashed ribcage. She only lived another fifteen seconds, just long enough to see herself grow to the size of a fully-inflated volleyball.

"Urgh." Steve pinched his nose shut and kicked a layer of sand over the bloody befouled mess of viscera that the inflated Rosey had literally crapped out. "Smells like…failure."

"You're gonna wash that thing off before we use it, right?" gagged Zoey, and waved away the foul stench as flies began circling around the bloodstained mound of sand.

Steve nodded weakly. "Yeah. Hang on, I'll be right back." Holding the Rosey-ball with one hand and his nose with the other, he dashed for the water as fast as possible. Zoey smiled and looked down at her Sonee, who was still writhing and squealing with panic and stress.

"You, my little friend," she chuckled, "had better hope that I don't let him score."

"Gaa-goo," whined the larva fearfully.

"What exactly are we aiming to catch?" asked Kevin as he, Allie, and Nick followed Al to the waterfront. Behind them, a sizzling sound and a horrible shriek of "SONEEEEEEEEEE!" rang out from the cooking pit where Kuri and Sugar were busy respectively preparing and terrifying their soon-to-be meal.

"Well, you two said we've got Sharpedoes in the area," replied the Legend, and pushed the wheelbarrow full of eight squirming Sonees and Roseys over a barnacle-encrusted piece of driftwood. "According to the _Sea Life of Kanto_ field guide, there's all sorts of hungry aquatic Pokémon around here. I'm hoping we get a Tentacruel or two." He stopped at a relatively calm area a few feet from the water's edge and flipped down his welder's mask. "Hand me Chum."

Allie reached into the wheelbarrow and snatched a disgustingly fat Rosey from the packed group of baby chus. The word "Chum" had been inked on her belly fur with black permanent marker.

"Wosey!" Chum squeaked in oblivious happiness, and hugged the Jerkop's arm with her rippling, sausage-like armstubs. Shuddering in revulsion, Allie passed her to the squad commander, then promptly knelt down and rinsed her hands in the salty water.

"Thanks." Al plunged his knife straight into Chum's flabby torso, slicing her open as if he were gutting a massive fish. The Rosey wailed and screeched, writhing in unimaginable pain as the Legend reached right inside of her torso and yanked out a handful of slimy organs, then flung the bloody mess straight out into the water. Kevin spotted a few Goldeens swimming over, but they didn't seem too interested in a meal of larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon guts. Al scattered two more handfuls of Rosey innards across the surf as Chum's agonized shrieks grew more and more strangled and weak. Finally, the fat larva let out a last desperate cry of "Woseeeeeeyyyy…" and slumped limply in his hands as she finally succumbed to the impromptu surgery.

"Disgusting," spat Al, and hurled Chum out over the water.

"SHARPEDO!"

_SNAP! CRUNCH!_

"WHOA!" gasped the Jerkops simultaneously as a huge Sharpedo with scars all over its leathery body launched itself out of the water and snapped up the dead Rosey in midair, then splashed back down to devour its prey. Only a single armstub remained floating on the bloody waves until a pair of Wingulls dove down and grabbed the fatty log of meat. A few Carvanha fins appeared and circled around as the hungry Pokémon nibbled away at tender scraps of Chum's chum.

"Looks like we've got customers," laughed Al. "Okay, start flinging 'em!"

Kevin needed no further instructions. Plucking a Sonee and a Rosey out of the wheelbarrow, he held the pair of chus at arm's length and punted the Rosey into the center of the feeding frenzy.

"WOSEEEEEEEEY!" screamed the feral as she soared through the air. Before she could hit the water, though, her skirt flapped open and carried her a few feet upward on a thermal, away from the thrashing and hungry Sharpedoes and Carvanhas. Upon realizing she was _not_, in fact, headed for a gruesome toothy death, the inherent smug arrogance of her species quickly returned. That big mean person was stupid for hurting her and kicking her out here! Her cuteness must have gotten his awe, and of course he'd stupidly helped her escape! With her skirtachute, she could just drift away on the breeze, just like Mary P-

"PE-LIPPER!"

_Gulp!_ The Rosey suddenly found herself in a tight prison of slimy skin as the huge Pelipper's bill closed around her, trapping her in its stretchy throat pouch. Before she even knew what had happened, the bird Pokémon tipped its head back and swallowed her whole, sending the little chu sliding down its gullet and straight into a pool of liquid. She giggled and clapped her armstubs together. She wanted to play the fun slide game again, and…

"Wosey!" Pain shot through the Rosey as the fur on her back began falling away and the liquid burned through her skin, dissolving the feral bit by bloody bit. She opened her mouth to scream, but there was no air to breathe anymore. Just before she passed out, she could feel the flesh and fat of her armstubs sloughing right off the bone. And even in unconsciousness, as the Pelipper's stomach acid peeled away her flesh and fat, the Rosey could still feel every single agonizing second of pain, right up until the moment of her gruesome, slimy death.

Down on the beach, Kevin grinned and watched the satisfied Pelipper flap away into the distance, pursued by a small flock of greedy Wingulls. Out in the water, another Rosey wailed and writhed helplessly in horrible fiery torment as a Tentacruel encircled her in a venomous hug, reeling her toward its horrid sharp beak. The marine predator quickly submerged, dragging the struggling chu under the surface to her doom. A few yards away, three Carvanha circled a Sonee, alternately swimming in to tear bloody strips of meat from the shrieking feral's body. Half of it had already been reduced to bones, and the murderous fish seemed to be saving its head for last. Wingulls had descended onto a Sonee closer to the beach, and were in the process of plucking out its glassy green eyes. If it had had something like a coat hanger, it might have been able to fend off the epidemic of bird Pokémon, but paralyzed as it was by shock and terror, the baby hedgehog could only float there, stiff as a rod, feeling the scavengers pick its body clean of flesh.

A Sonee and a Rosey floated in the midst of a Sharpedo swarm, hugging each other and crying in fear as they bobbed up and down. In a crunch of jagged teeth, the Sonee found himself holding on to the upper half of his sweetheart, but kept trying to shake the bitten-in half Rosey awake nonetheless. Finally, and perhaps mercifully, a pair of Sharpedoes snatched him in their jaws and viciously tore the bawling chu to shreds, filling the water with a cloud of blood and meat scraps.

"Sonee!" wailed the Sonee in Kevin's hand, tugging at his fingers as it watched its friends die horribly in the water. "Neeeeeeee!"

"Be quiet, you little bastard," Kevin replied, and grinned cruelly. There was no skirt to save _this_ feral.

"Squiiirtle."

The Jerkop looked down in surprise. The red-eyed Squirtle was tugging at the leg of his swim trunks and holding up a syringe full of clear liquid.

"What do _you_ want?" Kevin asked, nonplussed.

"Squirtle squirt squiiiiirrrrrtllllle…" slurred the Squirtle, and made a stabbing motion toward the terrified Sonee.

"Ah. I see."

"SONEE!" squealed the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon as the needle pierced its eye and carried on right into the fatty mass of gray matter. Chuckling, Kevin pressed down hard, injecting the syringe's unknown contents directly into the center of the Sonee's undeveloped brain. Immediately, the little chu's lizardlike slit pupils grew huge and black, almost reaching the size of cherries. Its thrashing and screaming ceased instantly.

"Sonee…" it burbled, then began waving its armstubs around and waddling in midair as what could only be the most insane high of all time set in. "Guhahgahhhauuaggh!"

Kevin glanced down at the Squirtle, who simply yawned. Cautiously, he placed the tripping larva down on the sand and stepped away. Allie, Nick, and Al gathered around behind him to watch.

"Sonee!" slurred the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. "SONEE! GOO-GAAGAUGHGHAH!"

_BOOM! SPLAT!_ Out of nowhere, defying every law of physics and chemistry, the Sonee's head exploded in a fine spray of red mist. Liquefied brain matter squirted out of its burst skull, splattering onto the shore as the dead hoglet collapsed forward, still wriggling and kicking in a drug-induced fit.

"Mother…fucking…Arceus," swore Allie, and pointed to the Squirtle. "Can I keep him, Al?"

"I think Matt already claimed him," added Kevin before the squad commander could answer. "Go check with him if you want. He's probably eaten about half of my Rosey by now."

Allie looked over her shoulder toward where Matt was now in the process of turning the half-eaten Rosey's skin scraps into a fuzzy pink eyepatch. He seemed to think he was Steve now.

"No thanks," she replied.

"Good choice," said Nick, and headed back across the beach to check on his hot-sauced Sonee.

"NOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Zoey, and dove forward as the Rosey-ball smacked the edge of the net and dropped onto her side. Unfortunately for her, she would never have reached it in time anyway. With a soft _whump_, the bloody pink sphere hit the sand, making the game's score 13-2, her lead. Even though she had the much higher score, with one missed ball, she had lost.

The Jerkop pushed herself upright and glared across the court at Steve, who was casually smiling at her.

"Turn around and close your eyes," she ordered through clenched teeth. Still smiling, Steve obeyed. Bending down, Zoey snatched up the Sonee by its ears and hauled it into the air with one hand, ignoring the baby hedgehog's cries of pain and stress. With her other hand, she unfastened the straps of her bikini top and pulled the whole thing right off, giving the Sonee an absolutely perfect view.

"GGGGGGUUUUGGGGHHHHH!"

"HOLY SHIT!" yelled Zoey as a massive jet of pressurized blood sprayed from the little chu's snout, spattering her neck and chest with drops of dark red. Hurling the bleeding feral away, she hastily slipped her bikini top back on. "Steve, get over here!"

"The _fuck?_" laughed Steve as he hurried over to her side to see the Sonee floundering around on the sand with a garden hose-like nosebleed. "Holy shit, it actually worked!"

"How in Arceus's name does that even…"

"Chandler probably loaded their genetic code with all kinds of subconscious anime clichés to prepare them for adulthood," explained Steve. "Now you know why I've been studying their Spring Break behavior so much. I just had to see if the flaws were as deep as I…ow! Hey!"

As Zoey tackled Steve and began attempting to vengefully bury him in the sand, the bleeding Sonee tripped over its own sneakered feet and fell flat on its face. Weakened and pale, it could only cry and flail on the beach until the last drops of blood left its body with a shuddering spurt.

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!_

"WAAAAAAHHHHHH! WOSEEEEEEEEEEEY!" screamed the blind Rosey as Kuri carefully lifted a corner of the water-soaked canvas tarp and tossed her lightly-seasoned body into the red-hot cooking pit. Steam gushed from the chu's every orifice almost as soon as she struck the searing fire, slowly and agonizingly steaming her to death as her fatty body expanded and her skin turned black and crisp against the hot seaweed-wrapped rocks. Her carved-up eyeballs bubbled and popped one by one, and in her last horrible moments of life, the feral could feel her flesh expanding and growing juicy and tender, like a fuzzy pink shell-less lobster.

Using her _tekko-kagi_, Kuri carefully flipped the Rosey onto her belly to let her cook some more, then checked the other four sizzling larvae. The smell rising from the pit was incredible – like prime rib, funnel cake, and Dr. Pepper all in one. Curious, she poked a puffed-up Sonee in the belly and was surprised to discover the baby chu was still barely clinging to life.

"Wuuhhhh…" it moaned through a mouthful of blisters, and weakly waved its armstubs at her in a pathetic plea for mercy. "Wwwwuuuuuuhhhhhhh!"

Kuri smiled and took a deep breath of the delicious steam. "Looks like you still need a few minutes, spunky." She closed the tarp and leaned back against a large piece of driftwood, basking in the wonderful smells of cooking larvae and the warm rays of sunlight shining down upon CWCville Beach.

"Grrowr."

A fuzzy snout nuzzled her ankle. Opening her eyes, Kuri looked down at her feet to see Sugarplum Fury rubbing against her impatiently and staring at the cooking pit with a hungry gleam in her beady eyes.

"Oh, be patient," the Jerkop admonished the honey badger, and stroked her behind the ears. "You'll get one soon enough."

And so it went for the Honey Badgers, for the rest of this one beautiful day at the beach – a day of playing, relaxing, talking, laughing, and enjoying each other's company to the fullest. Steve, Al, Kuri, and Sugar shared a meal of steamed Sonees and Roseys, while the rest of the squad contented themselves with sandwiches.

After recovering from their immense high a few hours later, Matt, Jexis, Amanda, and their new friend Yawning Squirtle all went surfing with Surfshack Tito and Zoey, and spotted a pod of Lapras out in the open ocean.

Serge finished _Metro 2033_ and subsequently discovered a Sudoku book half-buried in the sand. Instantly captivated by the challenging puzzles, he mastered the entire Easy section in just half an hour.

Steve and Kuri spent most of the rest of the afternoon building a massive sand castle for Sugarplum Fury to play in, and decorating it with the bones of the larvae they'd eaten. The structure lasted a whole minute before the playful honey badger accidentally attacked a steamed Sonee head and brought the entire thing down around her, upon which she hastily burrowed out.

Al continued writing his field guide to Sonee and Rosey extermination, and with Steve and Zoey's help, began working on an analysis of how the chus' ingrained anime clichés could be used against them to deadly effect. Later, he took Sugar and went searching for more ferals for the squad to kill, but found only stumpfootprints and candy wrappers.

All in all, it was a good day.

"So, did you have a good time?" asked Kevin, smiling as the sun began sinking behind the dunes and turning the sky into a brilliant watercolor of pink and orange. The other Honey Badgers were reluctantly gathering their things together, and Kuri had done a good job of cleaning up any trace of their presence. Only four mutilated Sonee and three Rosey carcasses remained visible on the beach – the rest having either been eaten by wild Pokémon or buried deep in the cooking pit. For the sake of sending a message to the loyalists, Jexis insisted on leaving a maple leaf covered in red paint halfway inside of a Rosey's stomach, a gruesome calling card if ever there was.

"Oh, yeah." Allie grinned and hugged him. "This was _just_ what we needed."

"Yeah." Kevin felt a tiny bit of regret forming in his heart, knowing full well that they probably wouldn't get another day like this until the end of the conflict. "Pity we probably won't have another chance for R&R for a while."

"Well, we had today, and that's all that matters to me right now," replied Allie. "Promise me we'll come here after the fighting's over, okay? Maybe Matt could teach us how to surf."

"I was just about to say." Reaching down, Kevin pulled on his t-shirt and heaved his beach bag up onto his shoulder. "All this makes me wonder, though…how do you think the chus live? I bet every day's like this for them."

Allie chuckled and zipped up her jacket over the red microkini. "And we're the great equalizers. One day, the 'master race' is gonna learn what happens when you mess with _Homo sapiens_." She looked up at her squadmate and smiled. "Thanks for making this such a great day, Kevin."

"Same to you, Allie."

Hand in hand, the two Jerkops walked slowly back to the Battle Bus, leaving the gentle sea breeze, the sounds of crashing waves, and a whole load of dead Sonees and Roseys behind.

Though no one truly wanted to leave the beautiful beach, the Jerkops still had a city to take back, and lounging around on the sand and in the water wasn't going to help topple the chu occupation. Every man, woman, and honey badger in the squad would always remember this one fantastic Spring Break 2008 – a time of peace and happiness right at the eye of Hurricane Chandler.

But everyone knew, in the darkest reaches of their hearts, that the other half of the storm was still to come.


	13. Chapter 9: Jerkops Gone Wild

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 9: Jerkops Gone Wild**

**April 29, 2008, 12:35 p.m., CWCville east side, near Wilderness HQ**

"Okay kids, looks like it's story time again." Steve announced cheerfully as he and his patrol squad of Kevin, Matt, Kuri, Serge, Amanda, and Sugarplum Fury made their way through a deserted back alley, away from the hustle and bustle of downtown CWCville. "What do you want to hear this time, Al's Laughyland story with BMP, or this other one I heard where the Sonichu brats get all jacked up on drugs and murder each other? Robbie castrates himself with a box cutter and Christine…"

"Laughyland! Finish Laughyland," insisted Kevin loudly as Matt and Kuri nodded in approval. "Al left us all hanging last night. Did he ever tell you the rest?"

"Nah, he let me take over and finish it for him." The squad leader cleared his throat and kicked aside a bent CWC Cola can as he stepped through a patch of garbage with Sugar on her leash. "We left off where BMP had just created the Sonee-Rosey, right?"

"Ugh." Amanda shuddered. "That fucking…Pumpkinhead Rosey was bad enough. Where does Al even come up with this stuff?"

"What can I say? He's always been one hell of a disturbing storyteller," replied Steve with a shrug.

In the months since the Honey Badgers' return from the Warp, Al had been spending a much greater deal of social time with his squad – far more than Kevin had ever seen him spend back in 2004. The Jerkops quickly learned that the Legend's legendary creativity also applied to a hobby no one had ever expected him to have: making up fantastic stories about a psychopathic murderer of neutral gender nicknamed the Big Mean Person, or BMP for short. So far, BMP's adventures had resulted in the gruesome deaths of Cera, Christine, Robbie, and a hell of a lot of feral and homebred Sonees and Roseys. The stories were more catharsis than anything else, but it was exactly the kind of thing the Jerkops enjoyed – nothing but glorious tales of larval slaughter.

"Okay," Steve began. "So back at CWCville Prison, Sonichu finds Jimmy Hill and breaks him out…"

"Wait. Sonichu's a good guy now?" asked Matt.

"_Yes_, for the love of Arceus. I thought you all knew that. So he zaps a few guards unconscious and they keep on running up and out of the prison to freedom. Back in the Shopping Center, BMP's getting ready to sacrifice another few larvae to Pumpkinhead when the door opens up and in walks the Negotiator …"

A shadow fell across the alley and a distant engine roar filled the air. Kevin glanced up to see a single dual-prop airplane flying low overhead – a rarity in CWCville. Since the city had no airport and since Chandler wouldn't allow low-flying air traffic because the noise gave him stress and upset his biological clock, the skies over CWCville were a definite no-fly zone. It was most likely just a private plane taking a tour of the Virginia countryside. Anyway, with Chandler stuck in the Time Void, the Chaotic Combo probably wouldn't care about one little disturbance.

"You guys know that Al actually started the whole BMP myth back in the early days of the occupation?" asked Steve, oblivious to the plane. "He was so disgusted by Sonees and Roseys that he just made up that first little story to just get some of his rage out through creativity. Of course, everyone loved it, and that's how all these tall tales started spreading around."

Kevin nodded, though he was still watching the skies. BMP was sort of a Paul Bunyan or Robin Hood type of mythic hero character to the resistance, but to the chu population of CWCville, he or she was a hated and feared boogeyman – the equivalent of a vampire, werewolf, or other creature of the night. Being gullible and naïve by nature, many chu families lived in a constant state of paranoia that one day they would find their children snatched away by this anonymous maniac to be horribly tortured, mutilated, and finally murdered.

Of course, it was really the Jerkops who were enacting all the torture, mutilation, and murder on the Sonees and Roseys, but the myth of BMP had stuck nevertheless. Graffiti reading **BMP LIVES** and more Electric Hedgehog Pokémon-based pornography had sprung up everywhere around the chu-friendly districts, courtesy of what must have been a very talented and very sneaky group of street artists who were also sympathetic to the PVCC's cause.

Overhead, the plane dipped suddenly, as if a powerful gust of wind had struck its wing. It was flying low enough for Kevin to just barely make out the shimmer of near-invisible energy surrounding the vehicle…

_Oh, fuck, _he thought, just before both of the plane's wings tore free of its chassis. Some invisible force crushed the falling debris into a single ball of metal and hurled them away, toward the sea.

_CRUNCH!_

"…and then he turns around to see six of them trying to esc…what was _that_?" Steve turned and followed Kevin's gaze up to the now-burning, wingless plane. "What the fuck? Was that…"

"Yes," added Serge with an apprehensive snarl. "Was purple crazy shock-pig."

"Right. Keep your eyes on it and tell me where it lands," instructed Steve as he handed Sugar's leash to Kuri, then reached for the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and clicked it on. "Menchi-Nasu Control, Honey Badger Lead, come back, over."

"_Go ahead, Honey Badger Lead,"_ Bryan Bash replied._ "Over."_

"Uh, we've got a possible civilian plane crippled by Magi-Chan Sonichu and going down over the east side of the city near Wilderness," Steve explained, throwing another glance up at the trail of black smoke across the sky. "You should be able to see it from outside. Looks like it's headed for somewhere in the jungle beyond the wall. Additional information would be much appreciated, over."

"_Copy. Hold, please. Over."_

"Why would they ever shoot down a civilian plane?" asked Kuri as the falling aircraft disappeared into the tree line on the other side of the city.

The bulky Russian man shrugged. "Maybe is shock-pig law. Maybe plane broke air rules."

"Quiet," muttered Steve as the walkie-talkie hissed with static.

"_Honey Badger Lead, Menchi-Nasu Control. What's your current location and assignment, over?"_

"East side, somewhere between…I'd say we're about six blocks from Wilderness, over."

"_Okay, listen up. Administration just issued your squad new orders. You're to proceed to Wilderness and rendezvous with a Jerkop squad based in that HQ, as well as a civilian liaison to act as your guide. Once there, you will be escorted beyond the city wall and into the jungle region to locate the crash site and recover any survivors and equipment you can. Confirm, over."_

"Copy and confirm." Steve glanced up at his Jerkops and nodded. "Anything else? Over."

"_Yes. It's crucial that you don't let any loyalist troops reach the crash site first. That's no civilian plane – it came straight from 4-cent_garbage in Tennessee. Over."_

"What's on board?"

"_You don't need to worry about that right now. Just secure the crash site, retrieve the cargo and anyone who's still alive, and get them all into Wilderness in one piece. Over."_

"Copy. Out." Steve clicked off the walkie-talkie. "Well that's just fucking _perfect_. Need-to-know information. Why do I get the feeling we just got roped into something really shady?"

"It can't be that bad," Kuri consoled him, and handed back Sugar's leash. "Anyway, they said we'll have plenty of Jerkop support. Who do you think the civilian is, though? Can we trust him? Or her?"

"We won't know until we meet 'em," said Amanda. "C'mon, Steve, let's go see Wilderness."

* * *

**North CWCville, Menchi-Nasu HQ**

Allie, Zoey, Nick, and Jexis watched attentively as Al tapped a few keys on his laptop and plugged a USB cable into the control node in SUZI's torso. The Legend had been tinkering with the Honey Badgers' LIESA support unit since February, and after a few false starts, it seemed like the small mechanical Rosey was finally ready to wake up again.

"I ran a full system purge to reset her," explained Al from behind his welder's mask. His gloves and protective apron were still covered in black scorch marks from all the soldering and welding he'd been doing in the forge all morning. "Now hold on – I'm going to boot her up. Hopefully she won't go into blue screen again" He typed a line of commands into the startup console and pressed Enter.

Once again, SUZI's speakers played the Windows XP jingle, and her eye-screens both turned into miniature replicas of the display on Al's laptop. As her system ran a self-diagnostic, the screens flickered and turned into their Rosey eyes, complete with the same hideous lizardlike pupils inherent to the species she was designed to imitate. Al popped open the laptop's CD-ROM drive and inserted a disk containing all the software necessary to run the robotic support unit.

"Can we change that?" Jexis asked uneasily. "Their eyes just…ugh. Creeeeeeeeepy."

"Right." Al opened the program's Customize menu and set the Normal mode color designation to a nice light blue. SUZI's eye-screens immediately changed to match his selection. "Good. Quick responses. Okay, let's get that AI in gear." He clicked on the Install button and waited a few seconds while the software began transferring a standard LIESA AI program into the metal Rosey's interface. "It's gonna take a while for the combat and utility programs to copy over, but I set her up so we can try giving her some basic commands. Anyone want to try?"

"Go ahead, Al," insisted Zoey. "You fixed her."

"If you insist." Al placed the laptop on the floor beside SUZI so she had room to move around within the confines of the USB cable's length. "LIESA, on."

The little robot twitched and activated her skirt repulsor until she was floating the standard two inches off the ground. _"LIESA is now active. Please state your name and squad designation now, Jerkop controller."_

"Albert Ledger, nickname Al," replied Al, enunciating each word. "Honey Badgers Jerkop squad, based in Menchi-Nasu."

"_Thank you…Al."_ SUZI blinked as she processed the information. It was slow going, given the fact that the commander was installing such a huge file on her at the same time. _"I am thankful and delighted to serve the PVCC. Please state your name designation for me now, Al."_

"Your name is SUZI."

Allie could have sworn she saw a single wisp of smoke trickle out of the robot's ear. Before she could warn the Legend, SUZI's eye-screens started flashing red in an epileptic light show, and a sound clip of the iconic red alert siren from _Star Trek_ blasted through the room.

"_ERROR 371,"_ stated SUZI in a voice somewhere between that of a Rosey and a Cylon. _"COMMAND INCOMPATIBLE. SELF-RESURRECTION INITIATED."_

"Damn it," sighed Al. "I think I triggered her previous state. Don't worry, I can wipe the system and start all over ag-"

"_CLEAR!"_ SUZI roared, and triggered a stock sound of a defibrillator firing. Her eye-screens blinked back to blue.

The Jerkops looked on expectantly. No one really knew what exactly was happening, not even Al. The LIESA unit twitched a few more times and wavered in midair silently.

Then, completely out of nowhere, it raised an armstub and waved.

"_YAY! HI THERE!"_ SUZI squealed. Her voice was still that of a Rosey's, but with none of the horrible irritating nuances of twee-speak. If anything, it sounded exactly like what one would expect a typical little girl's voice to sound like…through a synthesizer.

"Um, hi," replied Zoey, and waved back uneasily. "Are you SUZI?"

"_Iiiiiiiiii THINK so,"_ replied the robotic Rosey, and scratched her steel headspikes. _"Are you my mommy?"_

"No, this is Zoey," said Al. "And I'm Al. I activated you, remember."

"_NOPE!"_ SUZI giggled, hovered over to Zoey's knee, and hugged it. _"I got nooooo idea. Your pants smell like toothpaste!"_

"Okay, that's it. I'm rebooting her." Al reached for the laptop, but was halted by Zoey.

"Let all her combat stuff install first," insisted the Jerkop. "And…I kind of like her this way."

"You _like_ her this way?" asked Nick in surprised. "Listen to her. She's totally loco."

"As long as she takes orders, I'll leave her like this," muttered Al compromisingly, and snapped his fingers to get SUZI's attention. "Hey. SUZI. Go into infiltration mode Feral." He tossed her what looked like a Rosey's skin, skirt, and bow, all made of cloth. It had come with the kit, and needed at least a good thirty more stitches here and there.

"_YAY! Dress-up!" _The robot obediently detached itself from Zoey and floated over to the pile of cloth. In a matter of seconds, SUZI had extended a pair of hydraulic stumpfeet and zipped herself into an incredibly unconvincing Rosey costume, complete with paraskirt and bow. Her eye-screens promptly reverted to the lizardlike green and black slit pupils of a chu larva's.

Allie and Jexis couldn't help but smile. It really was a brilliant idea. The disguise wouldn't fool a loyalist mercenary, but Sonichus, Rosechus, and their children were all equally horrible at facial recognition, and would most likely accept the LIESA unit as one of their own kind. If SUZI's combat mode was any good, they now had the perfect tool for hunting ferals through the sewers without having to worry about getting swarmed. It wasn't as good as one of the newer model LIESAs – all of which were equipped with advanced holographic cloaking technology – but the Jerkops had to work with what they'd been given.

"_Wosey!"_ Suzi cooed happily in an imitation feral Rosey voice. _"Goo-goo! Sey!"_

"Switch to Homebred."

"_YAY! Wets pway Pwetty Pwincess!"_ The twee-speak dialect was absolutely perfect – just the right amount of irritating larval drivel to fool any Sonichu or Rosechu who might happen to unsuspectingly pick up the robotic Rosey.

"There, you see?" Zoey patted SUZI on her head, prompting a barrage of vapid giggles and another _"YAY!"_ from the little support drone. Perfectly in character for a homebred. "We'll still need to get her combat tested, though. How much longer before that stuff finishes installing?"

"Thirty-five minutes," replied Al. "Until then, I want everyone to get their trap kits together. We'll take her over to the training grounds and test out her weapon systems. SUZI?"

"_YEEESSSSS?"_

"Just…" The Legend sighed. "Just go to sleep."

"_Yawwwwwn,"_ said SUZI, and promptly passed out.

* * *

**CWCville east side, Wilderness HQ**

The industrial district bordering the east city wall was not a particularly well-populated place, and the few EHPF cruisers that patrolled the area were mostly just there for show, or were otherwise assigned to check up on the citizens and make sure they were all living docile, obedient, and most importantly, _straight_ lives. A handful of poor human families still lived in the apartment blocks and tenements, and most of these had been selected by lottery to be designated "nannies", or rather, caretakers for unclaimed Sonees and Roseys…of which there were many.

On any other day, Kevin might have expected Steve to take them inside one of said buildings for some good old-fashioned "winning the hearts and minds of the people" like they'd done with the whole rescue operation orchestrated by Dexter Booth, but at the moment there was a downed plane and some precious cargo out there beyond the wall that needed retrieving. And the only way the Honey Badgers were going to be able to get out of the city was through their civilian liaison and the other Jerkop squad.

"What do you think happened to Dexter?" asked Kevin as he and Matt made their way through a large rusted chain-link fence that surrounded an abandoned factory and continued following Steve and the others. "Do you think he made it out alive somehow, or…"

"There's no _way_ he survived." Matt shook his head sadly. "I liked him. He didn't deserve that."

Kevin nodded. "Slumberland's probably still sorting through all the prisoners. Hopefully, a few of them decided to join up."

"_Just _a few?" piped up Amanda. "Hell, I'll be surprised if any of 'em _don't_ join up. I mean, check out the benefits we got. Free food, big guns, all the Sonees and Roseys you can kill…"

"Or eat," Steve muttered, and winked at Kuri.

"I heard that. You two are just _gross_, that's what." Amanda made a face and pretended to stick her finger down her throat, prompting a chuckle from Serge and Matt. "You wanna keep eatin' those fuzzy lard balls, that's fine by me."

Kuri rolled her eyes. "Yeah, whatever. More for us. Hey Steve, did I ever tell you that I made Rosey sashimi one time?"

"_Really?_" Steve looked impressed. "Do I even want to know how that turned out? I don't think I could eat one raw…unlike some people."

Matt glanced at his feet in embarrassment. The Honey Badgers still hadn't let him forget the live Rosey he'd devoured while high during Spring Break.

"They taste different when they're raw," Kuri remarked. "Not as juicy, plus you can actually taste the corn syrup in their blood. I'm not joking. That stuff's friggin' _sweet_."

"Yeah, I'm gonna pass on larval sushi," said Steve, and pointed to a staircase. "That's gotta be it. I haven't been back here since…I think it was 2002. Al and I were with a few other Slumberland Jerkops and we had to take cover in Wilderness to avoid the EHPF. That was _way_ before they turned it into a factory, though. All I'm gonna say is that I'm pretty fucking glad that Walsh made friends with Robotnik."

Steve led them down the flight of stairs and through an underground corridor to a metal utility door with the red PVCC logo spray-painted on. Kevin imagined the base had several levels, unlike Slumberland, stretching throughout the entire building and a pair of adjacent warehouses. Wilderness was indeed the largest facility in control of the CWCville resistance, and was also where Dr. Ivo Robotnik had set up his base of operations. All of the SAV units and unmanned combat drones were stored here, or so he'd heard.

"Okay, I think they're expecting us." Steve knocked four times on the door. Instantly, an intercom crackled on.

"_You guys from Slumberland?"_ a female voice asked.

"No. Honey Badgers, from Menchi-Nasu."

"_Hang on. Just gotta verify…okay, come on in. Follow the hallway to the assembly room."_

A sharp buzz sounded through the corridor as the electronic locks clicked open on the other side of the door. Steve pushed it open and led the squad through, nodding to a pair of heavily-armed Jerkops that Kevin assumed were there to greet any unauthorized intruders with a warm welcome of AA-12 shotgun shells and stun grenades.

Beyond a short corridor lay what had once been the factory floor – a massive open room that stretched a good three stories up off the ground. Trucks, Jeeps, and a mixture of larger vehicles were parked along the walls, while groups of Jerkops, technicians, and other PVCC personnel migrated from place to place on their various assignments. Looking up, Kevin was surprised to see three rows of heavy steel docking clamps running the length of the ceiling, all of which were attached to dozens of blue and orange fighter jets.

"Are those Robotnik's UAVs?" he asked.

Steve nodded and motioned for the Honey Badgers to follow him to the assembly area. Sugar obediently trotted along behind him. "Yeah. Crackders. We'll have plenty of air support once they're all ready for combat. Apparently the good doctor also managed to reverse-engineer some of the loyalist Transformer technology into them, so they can revert to mech form as well."

As he spoke, Kevin noticed a group of technicians lowering one of the jets down to the floor on a crane. One man tapped a few buttons on a nearby control panel, and the Crackder seemed to split apart with a metallic grinding sound. But it didn't simply fall to pieces. In less than five seconds, the entire jet had become a thirty-foot bipedal Transformer mech, complete with a massive arm-mounted cannon and missile pods. The technicians nodded in approval and began running diagnostics on the massive vehicle.

"So, the time travelers finally arrived. Impressed, Honey Badgers?" a voice with a thick Spanish accent addressed the squad.

Kevin turned to see a tall, very muscular man with a buzz cut and a short mustache and goatee approaching from what looked like the Wilderness armory with another AA-12 slung across his back. A squad of Jerkops followed him closely, all armed with an assortment of MP5 submachine guns, a single RPG, and two SCAR-H assault rifles that must have been scavenged from dead mercenaries. In fact, a lot of the squad's equipment seemed to have once belonged to the mercs. Thankfully, the standard loyalist blue and black uniform had been replaced by dark green Kevlar armor and forest camo fatigues. Appropriate, given the terrain they'd be hiking through on the way to the crash site. If any Jerkops were going to stick out like sore thumbs in the jungle environment, it would be the Honey Badgers.

Steve grinned and stepped forward to shake the man's hand. "Joshua Martinez. I've heard good things about your squad."

"You heard right. Allow me to introduce Los Chupacabras," chuckled Martinez, and gestured to the operatives behind him. "Formerly based in Hogwash, Arceus bless 'em. This is my own squad leader, Lori Lopez."

A female Jerkop promptly pulled off her combat helmet and shook out a good deal of long black hair, revealing a stunningly beautiful face. Kevin could have sworn he'd seen her on TV or in a magazine…no, that had been Vanessa Hudgens. But this woman could have passed for the _High School Musical_ star's twin.

Steve shook Lopez's hand as well. "My pleasure, Miss Lopez."

"Please. All mine," replied the woman. "I don't think you knew it, but your squad's got celebrity status over here. It's an honor to be working with you, Mr. Morrison."

"Uh…thanks." The blond Jerkop sounded rather surprised, but smiled all the same.

"So, we're just waiting for this liason?" asked Martinez as the Honey Badgers and Los Chupacabras quickly exchanged nods and greetings.

"Yes." Steve adjusted his eye patch. "Did the admins get you anything on the crash site itself?"

"No idea. If the Crackders were ready, we could've sent up a few to recon the area. As of right now, we're gonna have to make our way through about five to ten miles of dense jungle full of dangerous wild Pokémon, poisonous plants, and probably a whole bunch of merc soldiers, too. And no offense, but I don't think your squad's cut out for that…even if you _did_ survive hell."

"It was the Warp. Not hell, but pretty close." Steve gave him a confident stare. "And you'd be surprised at what they can do. It's your call, Commander."

"_Josh_," Martinez corrected him. "We'll lead the way, but don't expect us to babysit you."

"You're gonna need to get past the city wall first," announced an all-too-familiar voice. "And it just so happens that I'm the guy who discovered the way through."

Kevin had heard enough of R-PAT to recognize Patrick Ryan's distinctive tones anywhere. The radio announcer was dressed in khaki pants and a red Kansas City Chiefs jersey, with sunglasses and a Royals baseball cap completing his outfit. It was more than obvious as to which part of the country he hailed from.

The Honey Badgers and Chupacabras let out a collective murmur of approval. Ryan was something of a celebrity among the PVCC operatives, and not just because of his radio show and his clever, charismatic personality. The Carnival of Carnage event and the Sonee and Rosey deathmatches leading up to it had proved to be a massive source of much-needed profit for the resistance. As it turned out, there were quite a lot of citizens who were willing to fork over an admission fee and some wager money to watch the creatures they hated so much being forced to slaughter each other in a bloodbath like no other. It had taken the EHPF and their cleaning crews a full week to remove all of the chu bodies from the streets and alleys of the abandoned zone, and resulted in the PVCC gaining a massive profit, a brand new HQ inside the CWCville Public Library, and the respect and admiration of countless restless citizens.

Kevin nudged Amanda. "He's our liason?"

"Looks like," muttered the Jerkop. "I don't care how good he is at makin' all that Sonee/Rosey _Fight Club_ shit…I ain't sure it's too good an idea to be bringin' a civilian into combat like this."

"Shush." Steve leaned back and glared at them while Martinez shook Ryan's hand and explained the basics of their mission to him. "Keep quiet, you two. This is serious."

Amanda rolled her eyes. "Serious bullshit, that's what. What're we gonna do with a goddamn anchorman; have him throw burritos at the mercs? He's gonna get himself killed out there."

"Probably," growled Steve out of the corner of his mouth. "But he's also the best PR resource we've got, and we're stuck keeping him alive, whether we like it or not. So unless you want to make this squad look like the BattleAXEs, pipe down and follow your orders."

"Got it," Kevin spoke up quickly, unwilling to fan the flames of the argument any higher. The last thing anyone wanted was to be compared with the BattleAXES, who had held the highest death-to-kill ratio of any Jerkop squad for nearly five years now. Amanda merely gnawed at her lip in disapproval. She obviously didn't like the idea of an escort mission one bit, and Kevin had a pretty strong feeling that Steve shared that dislike. Lost in thought, he found himself unconsciously fiddling around with his AK-47's new red dot sight.

"Okay, listen up!" Martinez announced loudly, and waved to the assembled operatives. "You know the drill! We're moving out ASAP, so stay close to your squad leaders and fall in! With luck, we'll be back by nightfall. Make sure you have enough food and water for a day, and above all, _nobody wander off_. We're finding that crash site, even if we have to burn the whole fuckin' forest down. Dismissed."

Kevin's jaw tightened in hesitation as he and his squadmates followed Steve to the Wilderness supply depot to stock up. Considering the kind of resistance they were likely to face out in the mountain/jungle region beyond the east city wall, burning the forest to the ground was probably one of the more _likely_ things the Jerkops could hope to achieve on such a perilous mission.

* * *

**North of Menchi-Nasu, zapbud fields**

Allie squinted up into the afternoon sunlight and brushed a few strands of hair out of her face. Beads of sweat had formed on her brow and forearms, and already the collar of her t-shirt was well on its way to complete soakage. It was an absolute scorcher – definitely one of the hottest days of the year so far. And out in the middle of the open zapbud meadows beyond CWCville, that same sun had been beating down on the five Jerkops and their faulty LIESA unit with merciless force for the past ten minutes of their hike.

_I wish it could just burn all these wretched weeds away,_ the young woman thought angrily as she crushed a pair of zapbuds beneath the heel of her boot and ground them into the soil. Most of her squadmates, including Kevin, didn't see anything wrong with their presence, but Allie flat-out hated the plants. To her, their ugly pink petals, blue stamens, and jagged yellow pistils were an assault on the eyes, and furthermore, they smelled exactly like high-fructose corn syrup: sickly, cloying, and artificial. But what she detested the most about them was their connection with CWCville, Chandler, and the feral population of Sonees and Roseys…a few dozen of which were now frolicking and playing together in the field of flowers around her and her squadmates.

The zapbud was a hybrid variant of the chrysanthemum species that had first been introduced to the area around CWCville in the days before the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon occupation, when the Virginia region was still known as Kanto. Barbara Chandler, the wife of Mayor Robert Chandler, had commissioned the species to be bred by city botanists as a birthday present for her son Christian Weston Chandler, who at the time was fascinated by Electric-type Pokémon, in particular Pikachu. Chris kept the flowers for about a day before losing interest in them in favor of his Game Boy Color. But one thing led to another, and before too long, airborne seeds from these discarded zapbuds had spread beyond the city limits. An aggressive species, they quickly began pushing out the native flora, resulting in vast fields just like the one outside Menchi-Nasu.

But all that Allie really cared about were the sparse packs of fuzzy, garishly-colored blobs squirming through the sea of garishly-colored flowers. Through an unbelievable coincidence, Sonees and Roseys – feral and homebred alike - were naturally drawn to zapbuds as a source of food and entertainment. The flowers produced sweet, edible syrup that the ferals could eat, and both ferals and homebreds absolutely loved to play around in the midst of so many colorful things that smelled like candy. Chu families would often go on picnics in the zapbud meadows, just to let their children run around and enjoy the sweet, saccharine scent of the flowers.

"Sixty," Allie muttered to herself as a pair of Roseys waddled by, squealing with inexplicable joy and batting their eyelashes at any Sonee they happened to pass. She'd been keeping count of how many ferals the group had passed, just as a way of keeping herself from drawing her knife and going on a complete killing spree. She might have been more level-headed on the whole than, say, Kuri, but that didn't mean she didn't tolerate the little chus any more than her squadmates did.

Truly, the fields were a perfect place for the Jerkop squads of Menchi-Nasu to practice larval extermination tactics like trapping and baiting, test out their LIESA units' weapons systems, or just get a few hours of R&R by killing any chus they could catch. With so many feral Sonees and Roseys clogging the veins of the city and with so many zapbuds to attract them, they were assured a near-constant supply of victims. Even better, the EHPF would never find out about the killing grounds, thanks to native predators and Pokémon who were more than eager to dispose of any fat little corpses the Jerkops left in their wake.

"Okay, this looks like a good spot to test her," announced Al, and held up a hand. The group halted. "SUZI, give me a head count of every Sonee within a fifty-yard radius. _Only_ Sonees."

"_YES MASTER!"_ SUZI's eye-screens turned red and her head swiveled a full 360 degrees around, performing a rapid infrared scan of any small mammals in the vicinity and identifying the longer-eared and larger-footed larvae…all in less than five seconds. Whatever Robotnik had put inside of the little combat drones, it was _incredibly_ powerful, and accurate, too. _"I count one hundred and three larval male Navitaricius targets. WHAT ARE YOUR ORDERS, SIR?"_

"Let's see." Al flipped open a dusty, dog-eared instructions manual and began reading a passage out loud. "Weapons Systems. Each standard LIESA unit has been equipped with a basic customizable weapons loadout for combat, stealth, and support operations. A miniaturized dual-barreled light machine gun is housed in the drone's right armstub, along with a retractable blade for close quarters combat. Ammunition is stored in the LIESA's torso, as well as a small fuel tank for the flamethrower in its left armstub…"

"What?" Allie laughed. "Hold it. Hang on a sec. Did I hear that right? She has a _flamethrower _in her_ armstub_?"

"You know what? Fuck it." Al slammed the book shut, loudly. At the sound of the sudden noise, a mixed crowd of ten nearby feral Sonees and Roseys looked up, startled. Their tension quickly turned to joy as the disgusting pink and yellow creatures noticed a new Rosey playmate standing right next to these big people.

"Goo-goo!" cried a Rosey happily, and pointed with her armstub. It was more than obvious what she was saying to her fellow ferals. The group all shuffled and stumbled after their leader, cooing and squealing and munching on zapbud petals and basically behaving just like the insipid little balls of artificial childhood that they were. Allie shuddered and instinctively reached for her pistol, but stopped herself just in time. Thank Arceus she hadn't brought Trogdor the Burninator along, or the whole field would probably be burning right about now.

"Goo-goo!"

"Goo-gaa!"

"Gaa-goo!"

"SUZI," muttered Al out of the corner of his mouth. "Feral infiltration."

"_YES MY LORD!"_

The larvae waddled up to SUZI and stared blankly at her, somehow entirely missing the fact that the new Rosey's eyes had just changed color from blood red to a flickering, static green. Even though it was more than obvious that the combat drone was only wearing a stitched-together Rosey costume with an even more obvious zipper running down the front, their little minds couldn't tell the difference. Nor did they care. All they wanted to see was if their new friend wanted to go waddle around and play tag and patty-cake and give some nice warm fuzzy-wuzzies to the Sonees like all the other feral Roseys did.

"Wosey," the leader Rosey said, and took a few more waddling steps toward SUZI. The other nine Sonees and Roseys followed suit, filling the air with a barrage of annoying baby-talk.

"Sonee!"

"Gaa-gaa!"

"Wosey!"

"Go on," growled Al through clenched teeth.

"_Uuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh…" _SUZI trembled, scratched her cloth headspikes for a few seconds as if trying to ponder what Al could possibly want her to do…then shrugged and promptly toppled forward, directly on top the Rosey who had stepped up for a hug. LIESA units weighed a full forty pounds apiece, having been pretty much made out of stainless steel, circuitry, ammo, and fuel. Against a weak little flesh and blood Rosey, there was no contest whatsoever.

"WOSEEEEEEEEY!"

_CRUNCH! SQUISH!_

Allie's mouth dropped open as the combat drone's weight smashed the Rosey against the ground, pancaking its torso and lower body into a burst mess of rapidly-uncoiling intestines, blood, and various revolting, terribly-designed internal organs. The little chu's spine shattered with a satisfying crackle of bone. Instantly and completely paralyzed by the impact, the Rosey could only stare up at the sunny skies in horror as her life and innards spilled and leaked out beneath her.

"Sonee?" asked another curious feral. The new Rosey had just given his sweetheart a big, fuzzy hug. She obviously wanted to give him one too! With a happy "YAY!", he waddled forward.

A pair of menacing red eye-screens locked onto him as SUZI immediately righted herself with a pressurized burst from her armstub hydraulics. The front of the little robot's disguise suit was completely soaked in blood, and shredded scraps of fur and meat clung to one side of her head.

"_HI THERE, little pork chop!"_ she squealed, and promptly extended a blade the size of a large box cutter from her right armstub with a menacing rasp of steel on steel. _"I brought sugary doom for EVERYONE!"_

"NEEEEEEEE!" screamed the Sonee, and turned to waddle away. He hadn't gone two stub-steps before a crimson slash appeared across his entire midsection, cleanly separating the little chu into two fatty halves. Giggling like a little girl, SUZI pulled the Sonee's torso and head right off of its lower body with a horrible crunching noise, causing its bowels to instantly unload into the grass.

"Holy FUCK." Nick sank to the ground, nearly choking with laughter. Jexis merely looked on in horrified fascination as the robotic Rosey tore her Sonee victim's head off and lobbed it at the shrieking, fleeing mob of ferals with enough force to crush another Sonee's skull into paste on impact. The spasming feral collapsed, and only stopped moving when SUZI cut open its belly and set its ample fat reserves on fire with a tiny burst from her flamethrower's pilot light. In seconds, the ridiculously flammable adipose tissue went up like a match head, burning the Sonee apart from the inside out.

"_WAAAaaAAAAaaiiit! Come back! I just wanna play with yoooou!"_ SUZI wailed, and set off after her prey at a ridiculously fast waddle. Zoey and Al glanced at each other, then took off after the combat drone as she and her prey disappeared into a thick cluster of zapbuds. A rattling burst of gunfire and the dying screams of feral larvae echoed across the field, punctuated by the malfunctioning LIESA unit's incredibly disturbing samples of random-access humor.

"WAAAAAAAAHHHHH! WOSEEEEEEEY!"

"GOO-GUGUGUHGHGUGUGHUGHGH!"

"SONEEEEE! GOO-GEEEEEEE! SONEEEE!"

"_NOOOooooOOO! Why do you run from SUZI's guns of HAPPINESS?!"_

A sickening ripping noise sounded from the field, followed by a shower of gore and a single tattered, spasming armstub that sailed a ridiculous fifty feet up into the air and smashed into the ground near Al's boot. Undaunted, the Legend looked on as SUZI exploded out of the zapbuds on her little repulsor jets, her costume burnt and shredded and a single green eyeball impaled on one armstub. With her other, she was currently holding up a Sonee by the ears and smiling as she hovered five feet off the ground. The feral gasped and shrieked, wriggling like a fat fuzzy maggot and flailing around helplessly with its armstubs. Its oversized sneakers banged against the drone's steel exoskeleton, leaving no damage whatsoever.

Allie smiled and sat down to watch the rest of the carnage. For a first field test, SUZI hadn't just exceeded her expectations…she had taken those expectations, ripped them in half, chopped them up, shot them, burned them to ashes, and finally stomped said ashes into the dirt. As prone to fits of spontaneity as she was, the LIESA unit might have just surpassed Sugarplum Fury in terms of combat effectiveness.

"_Your ridiculous feet make you weeeeak!"_ observed SUZI happily, and unsheathed her armblade once again._ "They must be removed…FOR SCIENCE!"_

_CRUNCH! SHICK! CRUNCH! SHICK!_

"SONEEEEEEEEEEAAAUUUUGHGHGHAA HHGHUUHHHGHHH!"

Allie couldn't help but wonder if Kevin was having anywhere _near_ the kind of fun she was having right now.

* * *

**CWCville east outskirts, beyond the city wall**

"That," Kevin groaned as he helped Matt up out of the old smuggler's tunnel that Ryan had just led them through, "was _horrible_, and I never want to do that again. You know how fucking lucky you are? They could've used Razor Leaf on you."

"Aw, come on," replied Matt with a smirk, and held up a fistful of the strange-smelling leaves he'd "harvested" from the subterranean Plautistics they'd passed on their way out of CWCville. "This stuff's as pure as the Squirtle's stash – I can tell just by smelling it. Kuri, I can't _believe_ you don't carry extra Poké Balls. You know how much a breeding pair of those things would be worth?"

"If I carried extra Poké Balls, Matt, we would never have had to go through all that horrible stuff in the sewers for Project Asperchu. That scar from Angelica's _never_ going away." Kuri climbed up the ladder and out of the hole, then waved away Kevin's offered hand. "No, I'm good. Get Amanda."

"Any thoughts on our new friends from Wilderness?" asked Matt. "I…well…they keep looking at me like they were expecting…I don't know, magic or something."

"They're expecting something more than just a Jerkop." Steve and Sugarplum Fury rejoined them while Kevin busied himself with pulling Amanda up from the dark, cramped tunnel. The squad leader had been conversing with Martinez, Lopez, and Ryan…most likely going over their route to the crash site. Beyond the sparse forest they'd emerged into lay untold miles of thick jungle wilderness, infested with all manner of dangerous creatures and Pokémon. "Look at it from their point of view. If someone just up and vanished for four years, then reappeared from what was essentially hell…you'd probably wonder what kind of rampant badassery they had to pull off to get out of there alive." He touched his eye patch gingerly. "Get used to disappointment. And don't get too friendly with the goatsuckers, understand?"

Kevin looked up, confused. "Goatsuckers?"

"Chupacabras. Spanish for goatsucker. It's this supernatural creature down in Mexico…" Steve sighed. Kevin had never heard him sound so aggravated, and frankly, it was making him uneasy. "Fuck this. Listen, just…I'm not gonna lie, I'm pretty damn angry with the admins right now. They could've sent another _full_ Wilderness squad instead of us, but now that we went all Bill and Ted on the whole conflict, they put us out on the line for _morale_." He spat into the grass. "Fuck morale. We're Jerkops, not celebrities."

"Easy, Steve," Kuri cautioned him optimistically. "Look, I get it, you're just nervous about going out into the jungle. That's it. Don't worry. I know all sorts of wilderness skills we can use."

"That's not the problem," Steve replied, "but yeah, that'll come in handy. We're gonna move out in a few minutes, so check your gear one last time. Kuri, I'm making you my secondary for this mission. Everyone else, if you've got a question about survival or navigation, you ask her. Otherwise, go pistols _only_ unless we're under attack. And above all else, stay within hearing distance of the other squad. It's gonna turn dark _really_ fast out there, and the last thing we want is to get split up."

"First you tell us not to get too friendly with 'em, now you want us to stick close to 'em?" Amanda shook her head. "Make up your mind, Steve, 'cause it sounds like it's not in the right-"

"Shut up! I _know_!" snarled Steve. Startled, Kevin glanced at Matt, then Serge, then back to the squad leader. Amanda and Kuri both looked about as confused as he felt right then. Out of the corner of his eye, he spied a few of the Chupacabras staring at them with interest. Maybe they'd been doing that the whole time. He didn't know, and frankly, it didn't matter one bit.

"Grrrowr," commented Sugar, and nuzzled her master's ankle.

Steve took a deep breath. "Sorry. I didn't mean to snap like that." He looked over his shoulder apprehensively. "Guys, I'll level with you. I don't want to do this…at _all_. This was a mistake. I shouldn't have said yes, but I did, and for all I know, we might be out here until tomorrow afternoon, or even later."

"We're out of the city," Matt suggested. "Couldn't we just evacuate all the citizens through here? Leave the chus and watch everything go to hell without Chandler?"

"You forgot Big Brother Chu," said Amanda. "We start moving enough people and eventually that purple motherfucker's gonna find us and bring down the Combo on our heads. Master of Anticlimax to the rescue."

"Crazy shock-pig took down the plane by thinking," muttered Serge. "He could take down Steve, Al…even _Serge_ by thinking." He patted Baba Yaga. "But no one out-thinks a bullet. Not even the crazy shock-pig."

"We're aware of that, Big Bear," added Kuri. "Arceus willing, you'll get to test that someday."

"Steve!" Joshua Martinez waved from the edge of the forest. "You ready to move out?"

"Do we have a choice?" Steve growled, then promptly switched his voice to one of disingenuous enthusiasm. "Affirmative, ready when you are!"

"Good man! Jerkops, on me!" roared the squad commander, and drew a black tapanga machete with a sawblade insert running down the back. It looked like it had been looted from a hunting supply store, and was pretty much the most threatening-looking bladed weapon that Kevin had ever seen in his life, other than the Red Devils' Evisceraker.

"On me," repeated Steve. He removed his kukri from its sheath and gave it a quick practice slash. "Just stick close, watch for movement, and we'll be back before midnight if we're lucky."

_If we're lucky. _The last three words rang over and over in Kevin's head as he followed Steve and the others toward Martinez's squad. He'd learned many things during his time at the PVCC. Some were useful things, like how to hold a feral Sonee or Rosey so it couldn't bite, or how to wear down a merc squad by attacking from the safety of buildings. But the thing he'd learned first and foremost, on that fateful assignment with Jake, was that _luck_ wasn't exactly the kind of thing a seasoned Jerkop placed his trust in.

* * *

**North of Menchi-Nasu, zapbud fields**

"_I made lots of new friends today!" _SUZI boasted with childlike glee, as if she'd just returned from a long day of kindergarten instead of a half-hour of nonstop and ridiculously brutal feral slaughter. She'd surprised everyone by displaying a new trick that they'd never seen a LIESA unit use before – discarding her damaged costume and replacing it with the bloodstained fuzzy hide of a Rosey she'd held down and skinned with her stub-blade. Upon seeing his sweetheart somehow come back to life after he'd heard her getting so many Prickly-Wicklies from the mean Steel-type Rosey, a Sonee had immediately waddled up and tried to hug the little robot. What remained of the little chu's severed, roasted pickle now lay a full fifty yards away from his corpse, which SUZI had literally turned inside out after castrating the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon by tearing out his internal genitals with her bare armstubs and setting them on fire.

It was probably the most gruesome example of a wolf in sheep's clothing strategy that Allie had ever seen, but she didn't care. She would have taken another robotic larval extermination any day over having to sit next to Kuri at dinner. Quite frankly, the formerly-feral Jerkop's table manners and diet both disturbed and appalled her. Not that she'd ever _tell_ Kuri that, anyway.

"We can get more of those fake skins, right?" asked Jexis, keeping pace with Al as he carefully peeled strips of sticky, bloody pink Rosey fur off of the combat drone. SUZI sighed dejectedly in his arms, but let the Legend remove her impromptu costume nevertheless.

"I'm sure they've got a whole pile of them in some storage room," Zoey replied. "The new model LIESAs don't need them, so we should be fine."

"SUZI, open your head," commanded Al. The robot Rosey obediently stiffened, and a muffled _click_ sounded through the smoky air. Al upended her, dumping out a gooey mess of Sonee and Rosey eyeballs and undeveloped brains encased in pure cholesterol. It appeared as if she had attempted to stuff the inside of her head cavity with her victims' body parts.

"_AAaawWWwww…"_ moaned SUZI, and slumped over limply as Al shook the grisly collection of viscera out of her head. _"I was saving those! I wanted to make you an eyeball necklace!"_

"Why does she even _have_ that?" Nick leaned in to inspect the cavity and winced as the sickly sweet corn-syrupy smell of chu blood reached his nostrils.

"I don't know." Al flipped SUZI back upright and slid her head-latch shut with another _click_. "Zoey, could you clean her off when we get back? I'm going to find out what the hell Steve's doing all the way over in Wilderness."

Menchi-Nasu loomed ahead. The former high school had been built right on the northern edge of CWCville, and was conveniently located right inside the blind spot between a pair of watchtowers. Chandler, in his infinite wisdom, had ordered that the city limits be rigged with these security measures to "keep homos and jerks out". Every human who lived in CWCville and had an ounce of common sense knew the truth, though. The watchtowers weren't there to keep people out – they, Magi-Chan, the EHPF, and the loyalist border patrols were the only things keeping the suffering citizens from packing up and leaving in droves.

Even in the mayor's absence, the blockade hadn't faltered one bit…in fact, if anything, it was even stronger than it had been under Chandler's supervision. Anyone who tried to escape was fair game. All too often the Honey Badgers heard stories of entire families who'd tried to sneak or bribe their way out of the city, only to be targeted and captured or gunned down before they could get twenty yards past the border. That, and it was impossible for the PVCC to ferry people out through the gap beyond the high school. The psychic inhibitor spells that Count Graduon had placed around each HQ could only protect so much, and the one on Menchi-Nasu only stretched as far as the zapbud fields. As for the secret smuggling tunnel that Patrick Ryan had located, well, that led right out into the mountainous jungle area, and a bunch of unarmed civilians wouldn't exactly be prime candidates for a mass exodus into _terra incognita_. The only flaw with Chandler's setup was that the towers' fields of view didn't cover Menchi-Nasu or the route to the zapbud fields, meaning that the incredibly expensive and high-powered automated sentry turrets had no way of locating or targeting any Jerkops who wanted to leave for a few hours of R&R.

_No surprise there,_ thought Allie as Al led them through Menchi-Nasu's outer gate and back into the city. As much as she hated to admit it, she missed the days when Chandler reigned supreme. At least then the PVCC had the advantage of their enemy being ridiculously incompetent. Now with the Chaotic Combo and the city's board of directors running the show, things were quite a bit more difficult for the beleaguered resistance.

They made their way across the practice yard, passing a few groups of Jerkops who were either training their LIESAs on an obstacle course with live ferals, practicing knifework, or else trading punches and kicks while Mypoe supervised. The martial artist had certainly proved to be a valuable asset to the PVCC since the Honey Badgers had rescued her from the Mal-Wart district, and she was more than happy to train the Jerkops in hand-to-hand combat…a field they were admittedly outmatched in when it came to fighting the EHPF. Sonichus could be gunned down easily enough, but close and moderate range was where they truly excelled. Every Jerkop knew from experience what a high-powered Spin Dash could do to an unprotected human body on impact, and the aftermath wasn't exactly easy to fix.

"_Al? It's Steve. Come back, over."_

Al reached for his walkie-talkie and clicked the transmitter. "Yeah, I'm here. Where are you? I've been trying your frequency, but all I got was static."

"_Underground. Didn't the admins tell you we've been reassigned?"_

"What?"

"_Wait, they didn't tell you? You saw the plane go down, right?"_

"What plane? What are you talking about? All they said was that you were being sent over to Wilderness for some…"

Steve cursed under his breath. _"Well, that's great. Listen, we left the Battle Bus in Slumberland and we probably won't be back until late tonight. Can you send someone over there to get it? We're probably gonna need a ride eventually."_

"I'll see to it. First things first, though…_where are you_?" Al sounded about ready to snap, and to the best of Allie's knowledge, he wasn't under the influence today. This was a rarity for him.

"_Well you're probably not gonna like this, but right now we're…"_

* * *

**East of CWCville, mountain/jungle area**

"…walking through the middle of the fucking jungle," muttered Steve as he hacked off a low-hanging branch with his kukri and pushed through the thick undergrowth ahead of Kevin and Matt. "Magi-Chan just took down a plane from 4-cent about an hour ago, and we got reassigned to accompany Joshua Martinez and his squad to the crash site. Apparently there's something _really_ important on board, and-"

"_Josh?"_ Nick interrupted eagerly at the mention of his cousin's name. _"Is he there? Can you put him on?"_

"We're kind of busy now, Nick," added Kuri as she grabbed Steve's walkie-talkie and saved him a few more levels of stress. "Maybe once we're in the clear. Anyway, Al, we'll give you a call if anything big happens…over."

The other end of the channel remained silent. Kuri tapped it, shook it, held it up to her ear, then finally handed it back to her squad leader with a shrug. "I think we're out of range."

"Yeah. Fine. _Awesome_." Steve took a ferocious swing at a large colorful flower and cleanly chopped it in half at the stem. "The hell with it, anyway. Let's keep moving."

The sun was beginning to edge toward the west, but beneath the dense canopy of trees and large plants that covered the eastern jungle, it might as well have been dusk. Only a few rays of light shone through from above, barely illuminating the area of wilderness surrounding the two squads. There weren't very many feral Pokémon here – all Kevin had seen so far were a pair of large Tropius peacefully browsing the trees in a clearing, a swarm of Wurmples feeding on a dead Ivysaur, and a single Pichu that Steve, thinking it was a Sonee, had almost shot on sight. The birdcalls echoing through the trees around them were much more plentiful, though – Swellows and Chatots and even an occasional Xatu, all adding to the chorus around the Jerkops.

Los Chupacabras, having a greater number of operatives in their squad, had elected to follow the Honey Badgers, staying within earshot, as a sort of rear guard. Steve didn't object at all – putting a smaller group in back would have made it easier for predatory Pokémon to single out a target and attack. Even so, Kevin was still somewhat curious about the Wilderness Jerkops. It didn't feel right to keep ignoring the fact that they were here on a cooperative assignment. It wasn't the fault of Martinez or any of his operatives that the Honey Badgers were here, and it certainly didn't make sense for Steve to keep insisting on separating them from the other squad.

The going was rough, and worse, it was uphill for the most part. There were no paths or roads to follow, and the closest thing to a GPS they had was Kuri's Murkrow, Aldo. Every so often, she would send it up to scout for the plane's smoke trail and make sure they were heading in the right direction. This was uncharted territory, after all, and right now, the bird Pokémon was the Honey Badgers' best hope for finding their way to the crash site. Luckily, Aldo was _very_ smart.

Even in the afternoon, the jungle heat was intense and very humid. Kevin's shirt was already soaked in perspiration, and he felt as though he needed a drink every couple of minutes. Kuri had instructed the squad to ration their water in case they couldn't find a river, but it was a lot harder than it sounded when he was constantly sweating so much of it out. All he knew was that if they somehow happened upon a water source, it would be the best thing to happen all day.

"What do you think's in that plane?" asked Kevin to no one in particular. "I'd guess something like an ammo shipment, or food, or guns…"

"If that's the case, they wouldn't have sent us on foot with all our gear," Amanda replied. "There's no way we're carryin' a whole bunch of boxes back through this damn jungle." She swatted a large mosquito that had landed on her arm. "Get off! It's gotta be some of those 4-cent guys or something."

"…and like I was saying, they're pretty much the BattleAXEs of baseball," explained Patrick Ryan a few yards back, who had been talking sports with Matt and Kuri for the past fifteen minutes. "I mean, they fucking _suck_. You guys are more like the Chiefs – not too good, but not awful either. No offense."

"None taken," chuckled Matt. "As long as we do better than the AXEs in terms of squad ranking, I'll be happy. Jesus, I still can't believe those morons survived for four years. Where the hell did they keep getting recruits from?"

"Let me just put it this way," Steve cut in with a pitying laugh. "Al once told me that the entire squad was founded as a joke, just because all of the other Slumberland squads…including this one…had some black sheep they wanted to get rid of. So they went to the administration and asked permission to start a new 'special task force' of selected recruits. Bam. BattleAXEs."

"That…actually, that makes sense," commented Amanda, and scratched her head. "I never thought about it that way."

"Is Jerkop dumping ground," added Serge.

"Exactly." Steve smiled and hacked a cluster of vines out of his way. "So whenever someone shows up to volunteer and mouths off to the administration, they just throw them in with all the other losers and jackoffs and self-centered narcissists who think they're better than everyone else in the resistance just because they're…I don't know, they played lots of military shooters or paintball or something like that. It's not a death sentence – they get the job done, all right. But it's not the administration's fault that their own idiocy gets 'em killed all the time."

"Wouldn't it be more helpful to just assign each one of them to a better squad?" asked Kevin. "I mean, that way they'd be forced to learn from a better example and…"

"It's a good idea in theory," replied Steve, "but then again, we can't afford weak links in this conflict. And believe me when I say that _these guys_…are the absolute weakest of the weak. Mr. Ryan here knows, don't you? I remember that interview you did back in February…would you mind telling us what the _hell_ you were thinking?"

Ryan shuddered. "Can we _please_ not talk about that? The admins wanted me to stop focusing on the really good squads all the time, so they pretty much forced me into it. I'm pretty sure I lost half my audience the second those…_monkeys_…went on the air."

"You know, I don't think _we've_ ever been interviewed on R-PAT," added Kuri in a not-so-subtle suggestion. She turned to Steve. "Have we?"

"Al and Zoey and I and a few of the old squad members were on, once." Steve glanced back at Ryan. "Look, I won't press you on the BattleAXEs interview if you don't tell them anything about mine. Deal?"

"Deal," laughed the radio announcer, and wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. "If I'd known it was gonna be this hot, I'd have stayed in that tunnel and let you guys do all the dirty work. At least there's enough entertainment down there."

Matt grinned and patted his jacket pocket where he'd stashed the Plautistic leaves. Kevin turned back around and concentrated instead on staring ahead through the dense jungle. Eventually, the conversations around him seemed to fade away, leaving him with nothing else but his thoughts.

Something had been bothering him night after night – a vague, confusing montage of memories he kept experiencing either in dreams, or else simply out of nowhere. It was always there, burning at the back of his mind like a candle that refused to be extinguished.

A sound of cruel laughter…Count Graduon's laughter.

Just before he and his squadmates had been sucked into the Warp and trapped for the equivalent of four years, he'd heard the ancient spirit laughing in his head…as if their disappearance had been the plan all along. Kevin was no conspiracy theorist, but then again, that incident hadn't been the only time he was able to hear the ethereal voice. It seemed to project itself only to the people Graduon wanted to speak with, mainly Mary Lee Walsh, but for some reason, he was the only one who could hear it _all the time_. Granted, he still needed to be within earshot of the staff, but when he'd asked Steve, Zoey, Allie, and the other Honey Badgers if they'd ever heard Graduon speak, the answer was always a definite no.

Kevin had kept the knowledge to himself after that, believing that he was somehow losing part of his mind. He'd followed orders and concentrated on the tasks at hand, like a good obedient Jerkop, but the mystery still remained. Was it even possible that he could have been imagining Graduon's voice all along? Or was it something else? Had it really all just been an accident…or something far more sinister than anything he could have possibly…

…_or fuck it, maybe it's all just aliens_, Kevin thought, and rolled his eyes. Well, it made more sense than some of the stuff he'd been coming up with in terms of explanations.

"I saw that," Steve muttered. "Look, if you're not gonna take this assignment seriously…"

"What?" Kevin snapped back to reality and glanced over at his squad leader. "No, I…sorry, I lost my train of thought."

"Don't blame you," added Amanda. "This mission's just one big pile of boring. We didn't even get to kill any ferals."

"We don't _always_ have to kill ferals," Steve sighed, and wiped the plant juices on his kukri off on his sweater sleeve, where it stained the white cloth. "Granted, it _is _fun as hell, but I'm pretty sure they haven't spread this…"

"Goo-gee!"

"Sonee!"

"Seeeeee! Seeeeeee! Wosey!"

"…far?" finished the blond Jerkop as he raised the Nepalese knife and reached for his revolver. The all-too-familiar squeals of feral chu larvae seemed to be coming from the base of a fallen tree a dozen yards away, obscured by a thicket of ferns and dense undergrowth.

"The fuck?" Kuri stepped forward, next to her squad leader. "Is that what I…"

"No way. No _way_," breathed Amanda. "Not out here. They wouldn't last ten seconds out here."

"Maybe, maybe not." Steve checked his Python to make sure the cylinder was full. "But I know a pack of ferals when I hear one. Kuri, Kevin, you two come with me. Everyone else, stay here and watch the trees. If Josh's squad catches up with us, tell 'em to keep quiet. Sugar, follow. Safety on."

At his feet, Sugarplum Fury sniffed twice and bared her teeth as the sweet, artificial smell wafted through the thick and fragrant jungle air. There was no mistaking it – she had most definitely picked up the scent of chu prey.

Kevin drew his AK-47 and flipped up the red dot sight, while Kuri silently strapped on her tekko-kagi and retrieved her Beretta from its holster. Neither Jerkop had any idea how a group of ferals could have escaped the city and survived out in the wilderness for so long, but they were going to remedy that, for the sake of Virginia's ecosystem.

And he had _no _problems with that whatsoever.

* * *

**North CWCville, Menchi-Nasu HQ, Honey Badger barracks**

"I want everyone loaded up for a standard patrol," ordered Al as he inserted a full clip into his M1911 pistol and pulled the slide back to chamber a round. "If anyone asks, we're going to the Get-Tar district to test out SUZI on some more larvae. I've already squared the assignment with Walsh – she agreed that it's about time we moved up to homebreds."

"Isn't that what we're already doing?" asked Jexis. "And what do you mean, 'if anyone asks'?"

"That's what _we're_ doing." Zoey buckled on a grey flak jacket over her leather coat and pulled her hair back into the ponytail she always wore on combat missions. "_You_, on the other hand, are going with Al and Nick to get the Battle Bus from Slumberland. After that, well, that's the part where you don't tell anyone what we're up to."

"So how come you guys get the awesome Rosey death machine?" the cadet pouted, and looked down at SUZI, who was busy gleefully eating Jolly Ranchers out of a feral bait box.

"Mostly because she's going to cause the single biggest distraction we'll need if I'm ever going to pull off something on this scale," muttered Al. "Those lying motherfuckers. If they want to send Steve off on some jungle trek mission without telling me anything…well, two can play at that game. SUZI, put those back and get ready to leave."

Huge digital tears welled up at the bottom of the little combat drone's eye-screens. _"But I LOVE them! They taste like pudding and make me sleeeeeeeepy!"_

"No. No, they don't taste like pudding. Put them back in the box."

SUZI's eyes flickered back to red. _"YES, EMPEROR OF BOOZE! INDUCING EXPLOSIVE BULIMIA IN 54321HUUURRRRRGGGGHHH!"_ Her head split open and fired a geyser of Jolly Ranchers into the air, pelting the Honey Badgers with several dozen wrapped hard candies.

"In the box!" shouted Al. "No, don't do th…SUZI! NO! PUT THEM BACK IN THE BOX!"

Allie picked a watermelon-flavored Jolly Rancher out of her hair, unwrapped it, and popped it into her mouth while she adjusted Trogdor's valves for optimal wide-spread bursts. "So it's just you and me and the Larvaenator today, Zoey?"

"That's the plan." Zoey leaned down and picked up SUZI, who was giggling uncontrollably as Al, Jexis, and Nick set about gathering up all the spilled candies. "We're taking one of the old pickup trucks out to Get-Tar…there's an apartment complex on the east side of the district that has a few chu families with homebreds. It's the best place to start training for the Sonichu brats." She grinned longingly. "Oh, if only. It's going to be a good day when _that_ finally happens."

"Agreed," said Al, and shoved a handful of Jolly Ranchers back into the bait box. "For now, just make as big of a mess as you possibly can. The more backup Menchi-Nasu sends, the better. But tell them that we're still bogged down in the slum district, no matter what they ask. Play dumb. We're gonna need about four hours tops. Think you can stir up the hive for that long?"

"Sure." sighed Zoey. "Both of them."

* * *

**East of CWCville, mountain/jungle area**

"Careful, careful," Kuri cautioned as Steve hacked away at the ferns with his kukri and cleared away the growth around the source of the Sonee and Rosey cries. "Don't disturb them. We'll want to catch them off guard."

"Right." The blond Jerkop knelt down and pushed away the cut vegetation, revealing an area of disturbed earth leading underneath the fallen tree. "Clever little shits. They must've been living here for a while now."

"But on what?" asked Kevin, puzzled. "They couldn't fend for themselves out here. Not without Feeding Days and candy supply drops."

"There's your answer," announced Steve triumphantly as he pointed to a tiny oval-shaped footprint – no wider than a W-Quarter - in the soft dirt. "Newborns. This has to be a nest or something. But wait…" He scratched his eye patch in confusion. "That would mean there's gotta be a Rosechu out here, then."

"You mean, a feral Rosechu?" Kevin had heard stories of feral larvae who, by circumstance, had actually lived long enough to evolve into wild, savage killing machines. He'd never thought one would actually be living outside of the city, though…and he'd certainly never expected the Honey Badgers to stumble upon an actual Electric Hedgehog Pokémon nest out beyond the CWCville wall.

"Looks like Mommy's not home," added Kuri in a lighthearted voice. Her eyes, though, were anything but mirthful. "Steve, I don't like this. Maybe…maybe we should leave them alone."

Steve stopped. "Okay. Where's the real Kuri Tatsuno, and what did you do with her?"

"Funny. Very funny." Kuri knelt next to Steve and pressed her ear against the ground like a Native American tracker. "They're right inside the log. If we get it out of the way, we should be able to…"

Steve reached into his pocket and drew out a piece of strawberry Laffy Taffy.

"…or we could just bait them," finished Kuri as her squad leader placed the fragrant candy at the entrance to the nest hole and wafted the scent inside. A few seconds passed before the squeaking and "goo-goo"s died down. Then came the cries of joy.

"YAY!"

"Goo-gaa!"

"YAY!"

"Hell yeah," chuckled Steve, and plunged his kukri into the ground while he readied the other to catch the first chu larva to show its face. "Here we go. Don't worry, Sugar, lunch is on its way."

"Grrowr," agreed the honey badger, and licked her chops hungrily.

The sounds of shuffling stubs and tripping Sonees grew closer and closer, as the unseen larvae made their clumsy way over to the source of the sweet smell. The grin on Steve's face could have belonged to the Cheshire Cat.

"Sonee!" a tiny voice called out from inside the log. "Goo-goo! Sonee!"

"Come on, come on," Steve urged between clenched teeth. "Come on out, you little…"

"Nee!"

As Kevin watched in amazement, the absolute tiniest Sonee he'd ever seen waddled out of the small hole and immediately tripped over its own bare feet, landing flat on its pudgy belly with a muffled "Oof!" It had to be only four inches tall, yet this chu definitely wasn't a typical newborn. It was fully developed, its eyes were open, and it simply resembled a massively scaled-down version of a regular feral Sonee. And even stranger still…its fur was completely green. If anything, it resembled the larval version of Wild Sonichu as portrayed in the despicable _Sonichu Babies_ TV show, only without the leafy bud for a tail and the vine-slinging armstubs.

Steve and Kuri managed to sum up Kevin's reaction with one simultaneous exclamation.

"The _hell_?"

"Sonee!" whined the tiny chu as it gazed up at the three big unfamiliar faces towering overhead. It glanced back to the candy, then to the hole in the log, then to the candy, then back to the faces.

Unexpectedly, it did the smart thing and headed back into the log with a cry of "WAAAAHHH!"

"OH NO YOU DON'T!" yelled Steve, and leapt forward, plunging his hand in after the fleeing baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. "Ha! Gotcha! Come back here, you little HOLY FUCK! OW! OW! FUCKING HELL! GET OFF ME!" He wrenched the arm back, pulling out the struggling Sonee…and about half a dozen other tiny Sonees and Roseys in a mixed variety of pink, yellow, and green coloration, all of whom were clinging to his sweater and gnawing away at the exposed flesh of his hand and forearm like tiny fuzzy piranhas. Their baby teeth were fully formed – a physical quality that no chu larva less than three years old possessed.

These creatures weren't newborns…they were fully-developed baby Sonees and Roseys. But not a single one of them stood more than four and a half inches tall.

"SONEE!"

"WOSEY!"

"GOO-GOO!"

"GET THEM OFF ME! GET THEM THE FUCK OFF ME!" roared Steve, and squeezed the Sonee in his hand as hard as he could. The little chu's head popped right off with a final gurgling shriek, while its tomato-sized plump body burst open like a bag of chips, splattering its intestines and organs all over the log. Reaching for his kukri, the enraged Jerkop skewered a Rosey through the brain, bisecting its skull and killing the larva instantly.

"SUGAR!" Kevin yelled in panic as he fought to restrain the struggling Steve so that Kuri could pull off the biting chus. "SAFETY OFF!"

Under normal circumstances, the honey badger would never have listened to a relatively low-ranking Honey Badger like Kevin, but her master was in danger, and there were Sonees and Roseys to kill. Bite-sized Sonees and Roseys. She didn't even need to think twice.

"GRRROWWWRRR!" Sugar snarled, and climbed up on top of the log in a flash of black and white fur. With a single leap, she landed on Steve's chest, sinking her claws into his flak jacket to steady herself without hurting the Jerkop. Realizing what the honey badger was up to, Kuri grabbed Steve's arm and forcefully pushed it right next to Sugar's mouth.

_SNAP! CRUNCH!_

"SONEEEEEEEE!" shrieked a yellow baby chu, and immediately let go of his would-be victim as the honey badger's flashing teeth and powerful jaws ripped off his entire lower body in one savage bite. It dropped to the ground, squirting blood from its midsection, and began squirming around and wailing helplessly until Kevin stomped it flat against the dirt. Unlike the normal-sized Sonees, however, this one easily fit underneath his entire boot and thus was fully crushed.

"HOLD STILL!" yelled Kuri, and sliced a Rosey into three bloody pieces with one swing of her tekko-kagi. Bits and pieces of chu flesh rained down as Sugarplum Fury viciously eviscerated another Sonee, tearing its lungs, heart, and ribcage right out of its fatty torso and spitting them right into its face as the larva fell dead to the ground. Roaring and growling, she sank her teeth into a Rosey's head and pulled it clean off, letting the decapitated corpse drop free of Steve while she crushed the chu's skull between her jaws.

The last Sonee was biting and tearing at Steve's thumb, oblivious to Kevin as he reached out and tore it right off of its aggressor. Holding the larva tightly in his fingers, the Jerkop reached down, grabbed a rock, and shoved it right into the Sonee's mouth, then pounded it once on the head as if he were playing a game of Whack-a-Mole. _CRUNCH!_ The Sonee screeched in pain as its teeth shattered and broke loose, leaving it unable to do any more damage than a homebred chu.

"Holy _fuck_ that hurt!" cursed Steve as he clutched his bleeding arm. "Son of a _bitch_! Those things don't fuck around." He glared at the one in Kevin's hand. "Give me that little shit! I'm gonna skin him alive and make him eat his own fur!"

"What the hell just happened?" yelled Matt as he, Amanda, Serge, and Ryan arrived on the scene, their weapons drawn. "Steve! What happened?"

"_This_ happened," replied Kevin, and held out the tiny, squealing Sonee to show them. "We found them hiding under the log. There's probably some sort of nest in there, and…"

A crackling, splintering sound shook the jungle as Serge dropped Baba Yaga and pulled the entire segment of rotten log up off the forest floor, revealing a deep, bowl-shaped depression that had been dug into the moist ground. Leaves had been packed together to form a soft bed, and a tiny makeshift trough lay set into the side of the large enclosure, filled with filthy water and small insects. The hollow log had only been the entrance, but this…_this_ was the nest they'd been looking for.

And squirming around inside said nest were no fewer than fifty miniature Sonees and Roseys, all as tiny and stunted as the ones who had attacked Steve. The little chus had no shoes, skirts, or bows, and were all either busy sleeping, waddling around, drinking from the trough, snacking on a meaty bone that had been placed inside the burrow, or clustered around a large mass of filthy pink fur and sucking on what looked like…

"Oh, God," Matt swore as the giant pink thing rolled over and sat up, revealing itself. It was a Rosechu, but like no other Rosechu the Honey Badgers had ever seen before. The female chu's naked body was lean, scrawny, and riddled with old scars, not curvy and sleek like a regular Rosechu. Her ears had been chewed to ribbons, and the bolt on her tail looked sharper and much more dangerous, as if it was meant for use as a weapon. But most disturbing of all were her eyes. They shone with a savagery unmatched by her vapid, city-dwelling, homemaking, salad-eating cousins, a primal maternal fury that only grew when she looked up and saw one of her children grasped tightly in Kevin's hand.

"Rose…CHU!" the feral Rosechu snarled, and leapt up onto all fours, ready to spring. The tiny Sonees and Roseys nursing at her breasts dropped off one by one, squeaking in surprise as their mother abruptly cut off their milk supply. Her fused eyes narrowed in vicious hatred as she zeroed in on Kevin and let out a bloodcurdling roar. "ROSE! ROSECHU! RO-"

_BANG!_

The Rosechu slumped over, spasming horrifically, a bullet hole punched straight through her head. Shocked, Kevin glanced to the right to see Steve holding out his smoking revolver with his one good arm while Kuri hastily bandaged the injured one. The look in the Jerkop's eyes was one of cold, unforgiving disgust, amplified by the pained expression on his face.

"Abominations," he spat, and stowed the Python in its holster. "Kill the rest."

By now, the Sonees and Roseys had figured out that something was wrong with their mother. She had stopped moving, and wasn't giving them any more Fuzzy-Wuzzies like she was supposed to. Whining and pawing at her limp body, the tiny baby chus clustered around her, squealing for more milk and trying to suckle at whatever they could get. Before ten seconds had passed, the suckling had turned to nibbling, and the nibbling quickly gave way to biting, until the little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon larvae were tearing off tiny chunks of their own mother's flesh and gobbling them up greedily like a swarm of hungry maggots on a day-old deer carcass.

"Do it," growled Steve. Matt obediently stepped forward and racked a shell into his shotgun, then took aim at the largest cluster of miniature Sonees and Roseys.

_BOOM! Click-click! BOOM! Click-click! BOOM!_ Three blasts rang out through the jungle as Matt opened fire without mercy, splattering the nest of larvae into a sickening mess of bloody meat, fur, and viscera. As their brothers and sisters were shredded to oblivion in the blink of an eye, the surviving Sonees and Roseys could only wail and scream in terror and agony before they too were torn to pieces in the unrelenting hail of buckshot and death. Finally, as the last of the thunderous reports faded into silence, a new, far more annoying sound split the air.

"WAAAAAAHHHHHH! WAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

Five of the tiny larvae were still alive and intact, all clinging to the Rosechu's mutilated body and wailing at the top of their lungs as they cried out in fear. Around the nest, a green Rosey's stumpfoot had been blown clean off, while another was missing part of its eye. A Sonee had been completely shredded from the waist up, and its lower body now lay in a puddle of blood and urine, still weakly kicking in its last moments of life.

"Sugar," continued Steve as he knelt down and patted the honey badger behind her ears. "Eat."

"Grrowr." Sugarplum Fury stalked forward, a look of satisfaction on her face as she opened her jaws and plucked the five baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon one by one from their mother's corpse and devoured them, silencing their final screams in a cacophony of gnashing teeth and wet splattering sounds. One Rosey tried to waddle to safety while her siblings died around her, but Sugar merely trotted after her and bit off her stumpfeet, leaving the tiny chu to feebly pull herself away by her armstubs for a few seconds, then snapped her up and swallowed her whole.

"Holy…shit…" breathed Amanda. Serge looked like he was about ready to vomit. Even _he_ hadn't been able to tear his eyes away from the slaughter. Matt silently stowed his shotgun and leaned against a tree, staring off into the distance while Kevin and Ryan continued watching the last surviving baby chus shudder and die around the nest. Kuri was still working on bandaging Steve's arm, and for a while, no one spoke.

"What are we gonna do with this one?" Kevin finally broke the silence after a minute had passed.

"Put him inside a canteen or something," replied Steve. "We'll give him to Walsh. She needs to know the ferals got beyond the wall. They _all _need to know. Once we find the plane and get the Chupacabras back to Wil-" The Jerkop's eyes widened instantly as he realized that the second squad was no longer with them. "Oh, fuck me." He grabbed for his walkie-talkie and clicked the transmitter furiously. "Chupacabra Command, Honey Badger Lead, come back! Josh! JOSH!"

Far away, through the trees, the harsh rattle of gunfire shattered the silence.

* * *

**West CWCville, Get-Tar district**

"_The wheels on the bus go RAINING BLOOOOOOOOOD!" _SUZI half-sang, half-roared as her malfunctioning audio processing unit skipped between cutesy schoolyard songs and one of Steve's combat playlists that she had automatically ripped off of his laptop. _"WE'RE ON THE HIGHWAY TO HELL-o operator, give me number nine, and if you disconnect me, I'll DRIVE OUR SHIPS TO NEW LANDS, TO FIGHT THE HORDE, SINGING_ _supercalifragilistiexpiali-"_

"SHUT! UP!" screamed Allie and Zoey simultaneously. The robotic Rosey stress-sighed and slumped forward in her little car seat, crossing her armstubs and pouting as the Jerkops' truck swerved left and right through the heavy traffic in the streets leading to CWCville's massive Target superstore. Shoppers (mostly Rosechus) filled the streets, all laden with big bags of whatever.

"_Are we there yet?"_ asked SUZI impatiently, and began playing Pong against herself while using her eye-screens as a display. _"I hate road trips. You're both pretty. Can I have a book?"_

"Don't you already _have_ a book?" growled Zoey, and turned off into a side street, nearly running over a homebred Sonee on a leash that was waddling slowly after its parents. Unfortunately, she missed. "Just download a new one and read that! We're thirty freakin' seconds away!"

"_I don't like downloading…stuff…"_ mused the combat drone, and opened up her head to retrieve a severely bent paperback copy of _A Game of Thrones_. It had been Steve's…once. _"Hey! Hey! WhyyyYYYyyy are there Lannisters in my head? I don't like them…"_

"Are you _trying_ to be annoying?" asked Allie, and glared over her shoulder.

SUZI's eye-screens reverted back to an innocent digital blue. _"Yeah…do I win anything?"_

"Uh, yeah. Sure. Why not. Here." Allie passed her half of a stale muffin that one of the Spikes of Blue had most likely forgotten when they last used the old truck. SUZI squealed happily and immediately began trying to cram the rock-hard muffin into her head, oblivious to the fact that it wasn't nearly soft or small enough to fit in there.

"Okay, this is it," announced Zoey as she pulled the truck into a small parking lot in front of a human-run donut shop…a rarity in such a heavily chu-populated district. Right next to it lay an apartment block from which a chorus of "YAY!"s, "WAAAHHH!"s, and twee-speak emanated in a cacophony of artificial childhood. "Grab Trogdor. We'll go in through the side entrance and start working our way through the apartments. SUZI?"

"_Heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheee eee! I mean, YES MILADY?"_

The Jerkop smiled and placed SUZI's stitched-together Rosey costume in front of her.

"Infiltration mode…Homebred."

"_YAY!"_

* * *

**East of CWCville, mountain/jungle area**

"Does anyone…want to tell me…why there were ferals outside the…what the _fuck_?" panted Matt, freezing in shock as the Honey Badgers, Sugarplum Fury, and Patrick Ryan burst into a devastated patch of jungle that could only have been a staging ground for whatever horrific firefight the squad of Wilderness Jerkops had been in. Beyond the edge of the clearing, several trees had been reduced to splinters, and small fires blazed in the undergrowth, throwing up clouds of smoke and ash as they greedily ate their way through the ample leaves and bushes and dead wood that blanketed the forest floor. Without a word, Serge and Amanda began stomping out the burning plants. The last thing any of them needed was to be trapped in the jungle with a potential forest fire all around them.

Three Jerkops – a middle-aged man, a young woman, and a young man with long black hair – lay strewn around the battlefield, as limp and lifeless as the dead leaves blowing across their corpses. Clenching his teeth to hold back the nausea building in his stomach, Kevin stepped forward to examine the bodies. The woman's broken body lay at the base of a tree with her spine bent backwards around the trunk. She had been decapitated cleanly, her head sliced off with near-surgical precision. The older man seemed to have been shot multiple times with a high-caliber rifle, for his chest armor and torso bore several gaping holes that were now exuding blood into the dark sticky pool beneath him. A ragged wound had been slashed across his face, but the cut itself looked strange. If anything, it looked like something had used a whip on him.

Releasing his chewed-up arm, Steve grabbed his walkie-talkie and clicked the transmitter.

"Josh," he coughed, sounding as if he were right on the verge of a panic attack. "Chupacabra Lead, Honey Badger Lead, come back. We've got three Jerkops down, possibly more. Over."

A cruel laugh sounded from the speaker, instantly confirming the Honey Badgers' worst fears.

"_We know,"_ the man replied, his voice distorted by the air filter of a combat mask. _"Believe me, you little shits, we know. Thanks, by the way, for taking the bait."_

Steve glanced up and mouthed _loyalists_ to Kuri, who immediately whirled around and began scanning the tree line with Steve's P90. She'd taken the gun at her squad leader's insistence – there was no way he could possibly fire it with only one good arm. Amanda, Serge, and Kevin followed suit, while Ryan drew his pistol and Matt began sliding new shells into his shotgun.

"_Look, I'll level with you,"_ the merc continued. _"We've got no idea where you are, and we're really not all that interested in you at the moment…not since your friends rabbited, that is. So here's the deal – you go find all your little rebel buddies and hop on back to CWCville, and we'll just take whatever's in that plane as our fee for letting you walk."_

"Uh, no." Steve raised the walkie-talkie half an inch closer to his mouth. "Lies. If you don't know where we are, how'd you get that radio?"

"_A friend dropped it off for us,"_ chuckled the loyalist. _"The same friend who killed those three."_

Kevin believed Steve could have very well crushed the receiver in his hand at that moment.

"Tell me," the blond Jerkop replied, wincing in pain and anger as his wounded arm shifted again. "Does the Combo really let you all fuck Bubbles at once, or is it more of a conga line?"

"_I could ask the same thing about you little fuckers and Mary Lee Walsh. Anyway, we're done here. See you at the crash site, pussy."_

"FUCK! Son of a BITCH!" shouted Steve, and hurled the walkie-talkie away. Matt quickly dashed over to retrieve it. "Everybody stand down. They're not here. They were _never_ here."

"Then who took out these guys?" asked Kuri, bending down to examine the last Jerkop's corpse.

"I should've guessed." Steve pulled a clump of green Sonee fur from his mauled sweater sleeve and flicked it away in disgust. "So all those babies…oh, that's just fucking _perfect_."

"Arceus…" swore Matt as he handed the radio back to the squad leader. "So what do we do?"

"GAAAAAHHHH!" yelled Kuri, and leapt backward as the young man sat bolt upright beneath her, his eyes wide with fear and his long black hair riddled with dirt and bits of twigs.

"What the-" Steve automatically reached for his revolver, then stopped himself. "Holy shit."

"Not…dead…yet, honey," coughed the Jerkop, and pushed himself up onto his knees. Blood ran down his face from a cut just above his eye, and the front of his shirt was speckled with red droplets. His mouth was bleeding, too. It looked like he'd been repeatedly struck in the face by something hard and blunt.

"Easy, easy. Stay there. You're okay," Kuri assured the Chupacabra operative as she knelt beside him and checked him over for major injuries. "You're okay. What's your name?"

"Yeah…it's Adrean. Ow!" The man flinched as Kuri peeled back part of his shirt to reveal a deep bruise on the ribs. "Ow! Watch it!"

"Sorry…"

"What happened to your squad, Adrean?" asked Steve calmly, and pointed to the two dead Jerkops. "You knew these two, right? Where's Josh and the others?"

Adrean turned, and noticed his fallen squadmates for what must have been the first time. His eyes grew wide with shock, and Kevin could almost feel the surge of sadness and anger sweeping through the man's heart as he realized what had happened. There were no words to describe that hollow feeling of disbelief and pain…the same thing he himself had felt when he'd watched Jake die in the sewers back in 2004. Steve must have known it too, for he allowed Adrean half a minute to grieve before resuming the interrogation.

"I'm sorry," the squad leader said kindly, and sat down next to Kuri. "Who were they?"

"Joel and Cally," replied the Jerkop tearfully. "Our medic and our sniper."

"What happened?"

"We were following you…we heard someone firing off a shotgun and-"

"That was me," interrupted Matt. "We found a chu nest and a feral Rosechu with some midget larvae. Show him, Kevin."

Kevin popped open his canteen and withdrew the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon from inside. It immediately screamed "SONEE!" and loosed off a Spark into his hand, but the Jerkop ignored it and stuffed the tiny chu back into its plastic prison.

Adrean spat out a mouthful of blood, sniffed, and rose to his feet, assisted by Kuri. "Good God, why didn't you just kill that little freak?"

"Evidence." Ryan pointed at the canteen. "Those little freaks are physically mature. If it's a new breed, and they've spread outside the city…you've got to tell Walsh. Whatever the case, this is gonna make for one hell of a broadcast once we get back."

"We've got to get out of here first," Adrean corrected him, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.

"No. First we've got to get to the crash site," Steve insisted. "Where are Los Chupacabras?"

"How should I know?" growled Adrean. "For all I know, they're probably dead too. And yeah, if you think the Homo Bear's gonna let those loyalist assholes get to the plane first…" He staggered over to a bush and withdrew a wooden baseball bat stained with what must have been several months' worth of chu blood. "…prepare to be _sorely_ disappointed."

Steve stepped back and paced around the clearing, holding his bloody arm. Kevin could tell exactly what he was thinking. There were only two choices now: either give up the mission and start looking for Joshua Martinez's squad, or continue on to the crash site and hope Los Chupacabras could fend for themselves against whatever had slaughtered their operatives. And really, there was only one call that the squad leader could possibly make in a situation like this.

"Right," growled Steve after another ten seconds of weighing the odds. "We'll keep moving. Kuri, how's our GPS look?"

Kuri glanced skyward and raised her arm. "Aldo!"

"KAW!" The Murkrow dove through the treetops and spread his wings, fluttering down to the offered perch. He promptly raised his head and pointed southeast, then clicked his bill once.

"We're close." Steve smiled, stood up, and reached for his revolver. "Adrean, looks like you're with us until we find your squad. Now come on. Let's get out of this damned jungle."

* * *

**West CWCville, Get-Tar district, apartment block Dorazio**

SUZI toddled into the apartment without a care in the world, her green eye-screens flickering with static as she made her way over the fire escape and through the open maintenance window. She hadn't even needed to use her repulsor jets to get in. Zoey and Allie had told her to be mindful of security, but judging by the two incredibly lazy EHPF guards she'd winked at down in the lobby, the chus didn't consider Dorazio to be a particularly at-risk locale. She'd hacked into the building's mainframe wirelessly in less than a second, and quickly downloaded all the floor plans and schematics she'd need to complete her mission. According to a few manifest files she'd discovered, the building housed about forty to fifty Electric Hedgehog Pokémon families, as well as a dozen or so unfortunate humans who had voluntarily agreed to participate in CWCville's Nanny Program in order to cover part of their ludicrously high rent.

Well, all that was about to change.

SUZI blinked, shifting her eyes back to the deep blood red of her combat/surveillance mode. Through her infrared vision, she quickly picked out a slew of targets, both large and small, around the apartment, and automatically bookmarked them for later. Once the scan was complete, she turned and headed right for what looked like the best prospect to start some mayhem…that was, the one apartment where her sensors had picked up the greatest number of tiny heat blobs. Her owners' plans all revolved around larvae – taking them out loudly and messily would result in a ripple effect, spreading chaos quickly, efficiently, and…

_CRACK! POP! _A shower of sparks burst from the LIESA unit's left ear as a fuse burst in her head. For a few seconds, all she could think of was strawberry ice cream. Then her secondary protocols kicked in, and the delicious images vanished without a trace.

"_DING DONG!"_ SUZI yelled, even though she had already prepared a special sound clip of a doorbell just for that purpose. When no one answered the door, she waddled over and pounded her armstubs against it, leaving a dozen little dents in the wood. Still no reply. Cycling through her options, SUZI scanned the apartment again…both stories, this time. Upstairs, two large heat blobs seemed to be hovering above the floor and slamming together again and again. All of the smaller blobs were downstairs, and most of them were clustered in what she assumed was supposed to be the living room. Chu architecture was notoriously misleading.

Frustrated and impatient, SUZI found herself wishing for a plasma cutter instead of her stub-blade. She couldn't just blast her way in – Zoey had insisted on stealth for this mission.

The answer to her dilemma came in the form of a small foot-and-a-half-tall hinged opening and knob in the middle of the door, much like a doggy door or a cat flap. It didn't take a genius to determine what was meant for. Larval access doors, or "baby knobs" as they were collectively known, were a common installment meant to be used by Sonees and Roseys, all of whom were unable to grasp regular doorknobs and too short and weak to open full-sized doors.

In short, it was the perfect way in for something as tiny as a LIESA unit, too.

SUZI ripped the smaller door right off its hinges and waddled into the apartment, humming the theme from _Robocop_ to herself as she approached the highest concentration of heat signatures. Just before entering the living room, she remembered to switch her eye-screens back to the disguised green color with reptilian pupils. She didn't want to blow her cover too early, after all.

The living room was, for lack of a better term, infested with homebred Roseys. Tiny sleeping bags, as big as oven mitts, lay scattered around the floor in front of a TV playing _Mary Poppins_, while the little chus wandered around from place to place, laughing, squealing, giggling, playing patty-cake, playing around with an Easy-Bake Oven and other toys, hugging each other, and babbling about the most sickeningly "girly" things that actual little girls would never say.

"Tee hee! I wuv sweepovewrs!" stated a Rosey, hopping up and down with joy. "YAY!"

"Do I wook pwetty enough fow da Sonees ta wuv me?" asked another, concerned.

"Hee hee hee!" a third one giggled, while trying to stuff what looked like a cupcake into the little toy oven. "Tee hee! Cooking's fun! Wosechus cook wots of tings fow dere hubby-bowts!"

"My mommy says I'm gonna be da best Wosechu _evuh_ wen I find a Sonee ta be my sweetbowt!"

"We'we _awl_ gonna be da best, wike no wun evuh was! YAY!" another Rosey announced.

"_Wat awe you doing?"_ asked SUZI in perfect twee-speak as she waved and smiled to the baby chus. At the sight of this new playmate, the group of Roseys let out an eerily collective "YAY!" and immediately stopped what they were doing, then waddled over to greet her.

"We'we havin a sweepovewr!" exclaimed the foremost one. "I'm Susie Wosey an it's my biwfday! Did you bwing me a pwesent? Whewe's my pwesent? I wanna pwesent!"

"_Uhhhh…"_ SUZI glanced around the room in confusion, then waddled over to a random My Little Pony toy, picked it up, and dragged it over to the Rosey. _"Hewe you go! Happy biwfday!"_

"YAY! I wuv pwesents!" the little chu squealed in delight, and hugged her. "You can be my best fwiend now! Wanna go spy on da Sonees an give dem da Fuzzy-Wuzzies?" She smiled knowingly. "Woseys awe 'sposed ta make da fiwst move in da wee-lay-shun-ship, so dat da Sonees don't get awl stwessed owt! Den dey can be owr Sweetheawts fwom da Gwownd-Up!"

SUZI smiled and nodded, even though her built-in translator was nearly melting from the vicious barrage of twee-speak. _"Dat sownds fun! YAY!"_

"YAY!" echoed the two dozen other Roseys, and began making their way out of the living room and into the hallway. SUZI was about to join in when Susie and one of her friends stopped her.

"You can't find a Sweetheawt _yet_," cautioned the horrid mock-baby, and wiggled her armstub in a "no-no" gesture. "We gotta give you a makeovewr an den you'll wook pwetty fow da Sonees!"

"_Ima pwetty Wosey awweady!"_ replied SUZI in irritation. These Roseys were keeping her from her mission! They had to be removed, or else her owners would be compromised…or something like that. She didn't remember. _"Wet me go! I wanna find a sweetbowt ta take care of an wuv!"_

Susie stomped her little foot, annoyed and stressed that SUZI wasn't doing exactly what she said. It was her birthday, and since she was such a special Rosey, she _deserved_ to have everything she wanted! And this new Rosey needed a makeover! Why was she giving her so much stress?

"I WANNA GIVE YOU DA MAKEOVEWR!" she screamed. "YOU WET ME MAKE YOU A PWETTY WOSEY WIKE ME OW I'M TEWWING MOMMY! STAWP STWESSING ME!"

"_I don't wanna wook wike you,"_ replied SUZI smugly, turning the Rosey's own outburst and self-absorbed attitude against her. _"You'we an ugwy Wosey! She's a pwettier Wosey den you!"_ She pointed to Susie's friend and smiled. _"You'we a pwetty Wosey! I wike you mowe den Susie!"_

"Tank you!" cried the Rosey, and curtsied as best she could with her stubby arms and feet.

Susie's harelip mouth dropped open, and she clapped her armstubs over her ears. "STAWP IT STAWP IT STAWP IT! I'm da BIWFDAY WOSEY! I'm mowe pwettiewr den Gina Wosey!"

"No, I am!" yelled the second Rosey. Unnoticed by either one of them, SUZI had grabbed the Easy-Bake Oven and was dragging it noisily across the floor toward the bickering Roseys.

"You'we a diwty wying twoll!" bawled Susie. "WAAAHHH! MOMMY!"

"WAAAAAAHHHHH!" answered Gina.

"_Wanna make sum cookees?"_ SUZI popped the oven door open with one armstub, revealing a mess of sticky half-melted goo that had once been a plastic cupcake. It was more than obvious that the Roseys had tried to bake the toy…with horrible results. Surreptitiously extending her blade from the other armstub, she drove it into the battery and sent an amplified charge through the toy's heating element, quickly increasing the interior temperature to a more suitable level.

"YAY! Cookees!" The two homebreds immediately stopped crying and waddled toward the oven, eager to prove their skill in the kitchen. After all, Rosechus always cooked lots of tasty things for their sweethearts, and when they grew up, they couldn't wait to bake all sorts of-

_CRACK! POP!_ Another malfunction surged through SUZI's systems, automatically reverting the combat drone right into her preset Extermination mode. Before Gina knew what had happened, SUZI's hydraulic armstub had lashed out and snared her by her sensitive belly fur, wrenching the fat little Rosey off her stumpfeet and into the air.

"YAY-EEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" shrieked Gina in absolute agony as SUZI whirled her around and squished her plump body right into the Easy-Bake Oven, breaking her spine in the process. The door slammed shut, trapping the dying baby chu in an excruciating tomb of melting plastic and metal. Susie screamed in terror and waddled away from the vicious LIESA unit, but only managed to get a few stub-steps into the hall before SUZI switched out her stub-blade for the dual machine guns and took aim. The "birthday Rosey" never stood a chance.

_CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK CRACK_

"AAAAAAAUUGGGHHH! WAAAAAAHHHHHH!" Susie wailed and toppled forward as her stumpfeet vanished beneath her, reduced to scraps of meat and bone shards by the barrage of miniaturized lead. SUZI speed-waddled up to her victim and stared down blankly, scanning the Rosey to see if she counted as a potential obstacle to the mission anymore. She didn't.

Leaving the legless Susie to crawl and flail around while Gina's body slowly caramelized into a bubbling, greasy, sweet-smelling blob of meat inside of the oven, the robotic Rosey activated her skirt repulsors and jetted over to the room where all of the tiny heat blobs had congregated. This time, there was no need to make a subtle entrance. She had them all where she wanted them.

"_DEAD OR AWI…uh…DEAD OR DEAD, YOU'WE COMING WIF MEEEEE!" _she roared, and burst through the larval-sized door with her machine guns and flamethrower drawn and loaded.

"YAY!" an enormous crowd of homebred Sonees and Roseys cried simultaneously, and temporarily stopped giving each other little hugs and kisses and other Fuzzy-Wuzzies as SUZI ripped the door open, her eye-screens flashing between red and green. Due to the sudden malfunction of her processor, the robotic Rosey was trapped in what could only be described as the most passive-aggressive state imaginable, and whatever happened, it was definitely _not_ going to go well for any baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon involved in her incoming rampage.

"_HI DERE!" _she squealed, and waved. Her eye-screens flipped to red, and stayed that way. _"I wanna hug yooOOooUU an YOU'WE AWL GONNA DIE! WETS PWAY TEWMINATOWR!"_

Upstairs in the bedroom, the Sonichu and Rosechu continued their loud hanky-panky, oblivious to the sounds of gunfire, flesh ripping, and horrified screams coming from the floor below.

* * *

**East of CWCville, mountain/jungle area**

"That's it," Kuri confirmed as Serge lifted her down off the large boulder she'd been using as a lookout point. "There's a line of broken trees up the hillside and a smoke trail coming from down there." She stowed her binoculars and grinned with savage relief as the smell of burning fuel reached her nose. "I sent Aldo ahead to watch for loyalists. If he spots them, we'll know."

"Fantastic." Steve patted her on the shoulder with his good arm, then quickly resumed clutching his hurt one. "_Fuck._ Ow. Let's get down there fast – I've got dibs on any first aid kits we find."

"No argument here," said Amanda. "Yo, Anchorman, you stay in the middle with Steve. Don't want you gettin' shot up or anything if there's mercs here."

"For the last time, I'm not Ron Burgundy," grumbled Ryan, but complied nonetheless. "So this is…this isn't what you'd call a normal assignment, right?"

Steve made a sound halfway between a laugh and a pained shout. "Midget larvae, feral Rosechus, plane crashes, MIA squads, and mercs? Yeah, this is actually pretty standard fare compared to what we went through in the Warp."

In a flash of rustling pages, the radio announcer's notebook was in his hand. "Mind giving me a few good quotes about that for tomorrow's show? We've got a whole lot of people calling in and asking me what the hell happened with you guys. I mean, Jesus, you were in there _four_ years."

As the group of Jerkops made their way down the hill toward the crash site, Kevin did his best to keep his mind focused on the task at hand. Given the fact that his squad leader and Ryan were locked in an interview/retelling of their sojourn in hell, this task was far more difficult than it normally should have been. Jolted by memories of that unforgettable day, his mind kept wandering back to the Graduon mystery…and even further, back through what seemed like a thousand years, all the way back to the time when he'd still been living with his family…when he'd just been _so_ eager to get out of his hometown and make a name for himself in the world.

_Kevin Shaw, Electric Hedgehog Pokémon Slayer,_ he thought to himself with a chuckle. _Yeah…no. I don't think Dad would like that._

Come to think of it…what had happened to his parents and his brother and sister? It had nearly been a full decade since he'd left home, and Lucy must have grown into a young woman by now…probably the same exact age as he was due to the four years he'd lost in the Warp. And speaking of that…how old was _he_? He'd been eighteen in 1998, add six years to reach 2004, subtract the three that were suspended in the first time rift, add the four he missed…

After a few minutes of deductive reasoning and trying to figure out the various problems with time travel, Kevin simply gave up and silently decided that he was twenty-one years old, physically. It was far less stressful than another attempt at marrying logic to time travel. He might as well have asked himself how the Combo's eggs could have been sent back in time by the same rainbow that had spawned Sonichu and Rosechu. It just wasn't worth thinking about.

What _was_ worth thinking about, on the other hand, was Mary Lee Walsh's role in the Dark Mirror incident. Al, Steve, and the rest of the Honey Badgers seemed content to silently blame her for the malfunction and for stealing four years of their lives…but then again, they couldn't hear Count Graduon's voice, either. It was all starting to come together now. For some reason unbeknownst to the Honey Badgers, the ancient spirit had either needed to get them out of the way…or perhaps the Warp was their intended destination after all. But _why_?

Dusk was approaching fast, and it was already hard enough to see things through the thick curtain of tree trunks, vines, and bushes. However, Kevin could just barely make out a large white and grey object, surrounded by flickering firelight, at the base of the hill. The trees around it had all been knocked down in a telltale line from where the plane had smashed into the canopy. Unbelievably, the cockpit and chassis still looked intact, but had taken some severe damage all the same. Survival of at least a few passengers wasn't out of the question. Kevin just hoped those survivors hadn't done anything stupid, like wandering away from the crash site.

"Right, hold up," ordered Steve as soon as the squad had reached the thirty yard perimeter around the downed airplane. They had darkness on their side, but even so, any sudden movement would give away their positions in a flash. Fortunately, the firelight was low on one side of the crash, giving them a window to infiltrate unseen. "Kuri, can you run recon?"

"I think so," whispered the Jerkop. She raised her P90 and screwed on its silencer, then took a few cautious steps down into the clearing. "Okay, everyone follow me."

Matt and Adrean complied, then Kevin and Ryan, then Steve, Sugar, and Amanda, and finally Serge. Taking care to make as little noise as possible, the operatives crept across the clearing step by uneasy step. Kevin followed Matt closely, his heartbeat quickening with every rustling sound from the trees overhead. Every distant shadow was a loyalist sharpshooter, and every half-hidden tree stump was an EHPF officer lying in wait. Kevin had no idea just how much of CWCville's military the Chaotic Combo and the city board of directors had sent to secure the crash site, but he had a feeling that he and the rest of the Honey Badgers were going to find out soon enough.

After what seemed like hours, the entire group had safely and silently assembled beside the wreck. Crawling on all fours with the P90 slung across her back, Kuri moved up toward the back of the chassis, beneath the patch of torn metal that had once been its left wing, and peeked around the corner before beckoning to her squadmates. What remained of the plane was little more than a midsection and cockpit. The tail was gone, leaving the contents of the chassis exposed like the mouth of a metal cave. It was anyone's guess as to what lay inside.

"Sugar," whispered Steve as he lifted her up to one of the plane's broken windows and gently dropped her inside. "Scout."

"Grr," replied the honey badger, and vanished into the darkness.

A minute of silence passed while the Jerkops and Ryan waited for Sugar's return. Then another, and another. After four minutes, Kevin was more than convinced that something had gone wrong. He glanced at Steve, who by now looked about ready to simply give up and cut their losses if Sugar didn't show up soon. The whole mission was just one giant montage of failure, that much was plain to see. They'd found two dead Chupacabras and lost the rest of Martinez's squad, an unknown number of loyalists were closing in with every passing minute, and anyway, the items and personnel they'd been sent to retrieve might not have even survived the crash.

To put it lightly, Kevin didn't have too many reasons to hope for a quick and peaceful resolution to this clusterfuck of an assignment.

"That's enough," muttered Steve at the five minute mark, and gave his revolver's barrel a vicious spin. "We're running out of time. Kuri, Kevin, Adrean, Matt, stack up and get ready to clear the wreck. Everyone else, watch the trees. Ryan, _stay down_."

The radio operator nodded and sat down with his back against the plane, clutching his pistol. Kevin obediently squeezed between Adrean and Kuri to create a makeshift breach line, lining up right on the edge of where the vehicle's midsection had been torn open. For good measure, Steve accepted one of Amanda's flashbang grenades and held it at the ready by the open window, in case there was anything inside that needed to be stunned and blinded.

"Ready," hissed Kuri as Matt took his place at the end of the line. She switched the P90 to full-auto, and Adrean followed suit with his MP5. Kevin felt his fingers tighten around the grip of his assault rifle. If anything hostile had managed to make it into the plane, it was about to come face to face with a wall of angry Jerkops and bullets.

Steve nodded. "Go!"

Kuri gritted her teeth, switched the P90's side-mounted flashlight on, and swung around the edge of the broken chassis. Keeping the submachine gun's stock against her shoulder just like Steve had taught her, she quickly swept the wreckage for targets, then stepped forward, into the plane.

Kevin followed her in. The plane's midsection looked like the aftermath of an in-flight bombing – chairs had been crushed, small fires blazed in the wreckage, and two men in 4-cent_garbage uniforms sat dead in their seats. Their spines had most likely broken on impact, and if that wasn't enough, the deep shrapnel wounds in their faces and chests would have finished the job. Kevin winced as he imagined what the crash must have been like for the plane's occupants. To have their wings torn away in the blink of an eye by Magi-Chan…they'd never stood a chance. But then again, _no one_ stood a chance against the psychic Sonichu.

"Arceus," swore Adrean as he knelt beside a bloody footprint leading towards the plane's cockpit. "Look at this. Someone survived."

"Let's hope," replied Kuri with a grim smile, and turned to the window. "Steve, we're clear."

"Good. Check the rest, we'll set up here. Let me know if you find Sugar."

The Jerkops pressed on further into the plane as Steve, Ryan, and the other Honey Badgers began filing into the midsection to start making camp in the wreckage. Night had well and truly fallen, and it was more than obvious that no one would be leaving the jungle during the prime hunting hours for predatory Pokémon.

For now, all that the Honey Badgers could do was to find what they came for, and hope that the loyalists didn't find them first.

* * *

**West CWCville, Get-Tar district, apartment block Dorazio**

In just two minutes, half of the members of the slumber party had been eviscerated, burned, blown to pieces, or otherwise dispatched in excessively cruel ways by the malfunctioning LIESA unit. So far, SUZI was doing a fantastic job, even at thirty glitches per second.

"WAAAAAAHHHHHH!" wailed a Sonee, and immediately tripped. SUZI waddled over, grabbed him by his tiny tail, and quickly administered a flamethrower enema with her other armstub, incinerating the screaming chu from the inside out as fire exploded out of his mouth and nose and melted his hideous lizard eyes. Hurling the barbecued homebred through the wall and into the kitchen, she spun around like a top and gunned down another Sonee, shredding his misshapen head and one armstub into ribbons of flesh. One Rosey tried to heave her incredibly dense body up the stairs so she could tell the adult chus about the mean Decepticon Rosey who was shattering everyone's Heart Levels, but before she could even get to the second step, SUZI sliced through her back fat and ripped out her entire spine, leaving the larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon completely unable to move. For good measure, the combat drone punched her victim in the face, driving her hydraulic stub right through the Rosey's skull and into the stairs.

Over on the other side of the room, a pair of homebreds – a Sonee and a Rosey - had managed to squeeze their fat bodies under the bed and were now hugging each other and crying in fear. The Sonee was slightly less scared, because he had his heartsweet there to protect him. As long as she was his GodJesus-chosen Sweetheart from the Ground-Up, there was no way any big mean people or dirty trolls could…

"NOOOOOO! HEWP MEEEEEEEEE!" the Rosey screamed as SUZI grabbed her by both stumpfeet and pulled, instantly dislocating the bones. "WAAAHH! WAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

_POP! POP! CRUNCH!_ The Sonee whimpered and immediately shit himself in a stress overload as the Decepticon Rosey wrenched his heartsweet away from him and began ripping her limb from limb. His Heart Level had been shattered…but then again, he could always find another Rosey to build it back up again with Fuzzy-Wuzzies and hugs. The other Roseys would surely be impressed by his courage once he zapped to the extreme and defeated the evil Decepticon Rosey that was giving the true and honest copyrighted Sonees and Roseys so many owies and Prickly-Wicklies, and they would all bat their eyelashes at him and want to be his new sweetheart!

Finally, the screaming stopped. The Sonee sighed in relief, knowing that he had been smart and brave enough so that the mean Rosey couldn't possibly find him. He'd just rest a while, and then he'd go and use his spunk and speed to zap her and make her apologize and bring all the Roseys back so he could have more Fuzzy-Wuzzies. It was foolproof! He just needed some time to rest.

"_Is da mean twoll gone?"_ asked SUZI, who by now had regained control of her systems and was crawling under the bed toward the Sonee. Naturally, the little chu didn't recognize her at all.

The homebred nodded. "I tink so. Can you hewp me zap dat mean Decepticon Wosey? We can be wike da Cayotic Combow! You'wl be Wosechu an I'm da twoo an owiginaw Sonichu!"

"_Okay!"_ cried the LIESA unit, and scurried out from under the bed while the Sonee followed eagerly. She pointed to where Susie Rosey was crawling across the room. The legless Rosey had somehow managed to drag her mutilated body down the hall and through the door, and was now screaming at the top of her lungs for someone to help her. _"Dere's da twoll! Wet's get her!"_

"WAAAAHHHHH!" wailed Susie as she looked up and saw the Decepticon Rosey and a Sonee waddling toward her. Instantly, her face scrunched up into a hopeful smile. A Sonee! He would be sure to save her from the mean Decepticon Rosey, because all Sonees were so strong and brave and speedy and…

_ZZZAP!_

The Rosey toppled over backward as her sweetbolt let loose with his strongest Spark, zapping her right in the face and making her heady hurt. As Susie rolled around, crying in pain, the Sonee approached her and began kicking her helpless little body with his sneakers. It didn't hurt as much as the electric shock, but she didn't understand why he was giving her Prickly-Wicklies! Sonees were always supposed to save their heartsweets from danger…except when they were too stressed or it was too hard. Then it was up to the Roseys to save themselves _and_ the Sonees.

"STAWP IT! WAAAAAAAAHHHH!" she bawled, thrashing around in misery as the baby chu continued weakly kicking her. SUZI giggled and quietly slit the Rosey's jugular with her stub-blade while the Sonee was busy declaring himself a "hewo", leaving her to bleed out and choke and cough to death on the floor. The last thing Susie saw before the life left her eyes was her sweetbolt's foot colliding with her ample belly and her own blood rushing out of her fat throat.

"_YAY! You'we my hewo!"_ cooed SUZI, and hugged the Sonee joyfully. He squealed in happiness. Finally! He'd found his true and honest Sweetheart from the Ground-Up, just like his mommy and daddy kept telling him he would! Now there would never be any more stress again!

"YAY! I wuv you!" The Sonee leaned in for a kiss, shivering with glee. He'd beaten the mean Decepticon Rosey, which meant his heartsweet had to give him lots of Fuzzy-Wuzzies now!

"_I wuv you too!" _SUZI's eye-screens changed back to red, and in that single, horrifying moment, the Sonee realized he hadn't won the game at all. She'd cheated! She'd cheated and made the game too hard to win! Well, if the Decepticon Rosey apologized for cheating and conceded that he'd won after all, he'd give her back some of the Respect Points she'd lost after she…

SUZI pressed her face into his, smashing the Sonee's fat head against her cheekspot speakers. A loud _click_ sounded through the apartment, followed by the loudest, most terrifying sound the homebred had ever heard in his short life. A high-pitched sonic screech reverberated through his skin, his flesh, his fatty organs, and into his very bones themselves, penetrating every single molecule of his body in a cacophonic barrage of auditory pain. His eardrums ruptured and popped like tiny balloons, and he felt his bowels release again of their own accord. This time, however, it wasn't because of the stress.

When Dr. Ivo Robotnik had invented the LIESA unit's first iteration, he had made sure that every single system and subsystem of the robotic Roseys could be used as a potential weapon, including their built-in speakers. During the testing phase, he'd discovered that not only could the legendary Brown Note be used against Sonees and Roseys to make them shit themselves on command, but another frequency existed on the opposite end of the spectrum…one that only worked at a very close range, and was much, _much_ more effective than the Brown Note. It had originally been known as the SDS, or Sonic Disintegration Scream, but like most military technology, its users had granted it a different, much more effective nickname…the Death Note.

_EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEE_

_SPLURCH! SPLAT!_ The Sonee literally melted in SUZI's armstubs as his molecular structure collapsed, reducing the little chu to a soupy red and pink pool of goo on the carpet. SUZI giggled and splashed around in the gore like a child playing in rain puddles, then waddled off elsewhere.

Up in the bedroom, the Sonichu and Rosechu lay side by side, relishing the afterglow from their long hanky-panky session. This peace was promptly shattered when a screaming Sonee exploded through the floorboards and pancaked on the ceiling, showering the couple with a deluge of syrupy blood and killing the hoglet instantly. SUZI poked her head through the hole, waved cheerfully, and ducked back down to find more prey while the lovehogs shrieked in terror.

* * *

**East of CWCville, mountain/jungle area**

Kevin kicked open the bathroom door, half-expecting to find a 4-cent_garbage employee dead on the toilet. Thankfully, the room was empty.

"Find anything?" Matt called from further up toward the cockpit. Kuri and Adrean were busying themselves with opening each overhead compartment in search of whatever precious payload the transport plane had been carrying. So far, they'd swept everything but the cockpit and the cargo bay, finding nothing but more dead personnel and members of the flight crew.

"Nope," responded Kevin, and slammed the door shut. "How's it look over there?"

"Lots of debris, lots of blood." The Jerkop winced and turned away from the corpse of a woman whose head had been crushed against the wall, most likely on impact. "That purple _fucker_."

"We'll get our chance soon enough," Kuri assured him as she and Adrean rejoined Kevin and Matt. "Anyway, the midsection's a no-go. We found clothes and stuff, but nothing too valuable. We'll take the cockpit – you guys head to the cargo bay."

"Right." Kevin gestured to his friend and headed for the ladder hatch opposite the cockpit. The plane had obviously been converted for transport rather than passenger comfort by 4-cent technicians, so much of the internal structure seemed to have simply been welded on. Case in point, the hatch. Part of the floor had been removed, and a ladder welded in its place so that personnel up top could reach the cargo bay. And seeing as how the entire bottom half of the chassis lay embedded in the ground, it was quite possible that some passengers had been able to survive down there.

Matt wrenched the steel trapdoor open and shone his flashlight into the darkness, revealing a cluttered mess of broken crates. The floor was blanketed with scattered ammunition, medical supplies, and other necessities that the beleaguered resistance sorely needed.

"Jackpot," the Jerkop said, and grinned at Kevin. "I'm gonna grab one of those kits for Steve."

"Okay. Watch yourself," cautioned Kevin. Circling around the hatch, he knelt down for a better vantage point and propped up the AK's barrel against the edge. Matt shouldered his shotgun, drew his Beretta, and stepped through the hatch and onto the ladder. Hand over hand, the Jerkop climbed down to the cargo bay, snatched up the nearest intact first aid kit, and heaved it back up to his squadmate. "Here! Get that over to Steve!"

Kevin shook his head. "He'll be fine for now. I'm not leaving you alone down there." Grabbing the ladder, he slid down and landed in the mess of supplies next to Matt. "Fuck. There's no way we're getting all of this back to Menchi-Nasu without a truck or something."

"Where were they even going to land this thing?" Matt asked as they made their way down the aisle of crates toward the back of the cargo bay. "Charlottesville-Albemarle, you think? Then they'd send this stuff through by smugglers. It makes sense."

"Yeah, I guess. That's not happening now, though." Kevin picked up a .50 caliber bullet and pocketed it. "Wow. No wonder Magi-Chan took this thing down. Look at all this stuff…there's gotta be…holy shit!" He pointed to what looked like a large open suitcase with what looked like a disassembled sniper rifle inside. "This stuff's _serious_. What the hell are they doing?"

"I don't know and I don't care," replied Matt. "All I know is that…wait, hold on. Get over here." He beckoned to Kevin, then raised his pistol and flashlight toward a pile of crates on the far end of the storage room. "PVCC! Rise, resist, remember Tennessee! Confirm!"

"4-cent, thank Arceus!" A tall, brown-haired man with glasses stood up from behind the crate barricade and waved to them, his voice heavy with relief. "You guys came from CWCville?"

"Yeah!" yelled Kevin, and placed his AK-47 back in its shoulder strap as he and Matt made their way down the aisle. "How many of you are there? Anyone hurt?"

"We all got pretty banged up on the way down," replied the 4-cent_garbage operative as two more people – an Indian man and a blond-haired woman – stood up beside him, cradling shotguns in their arms. "Good thing we had all this medical stuff, though. What the hell happened? I thought that fat fuck didn't have AA."

"You want to blame someone, blame Magi-Chan Sonichu," Matt growled as they reached the man. He smiled and offered his hand. "Matt Clark, Honey Badgers Jerkop squad."

"Nathan Shaw, 4-cent liaison for Dr. Robotnik. Call me Nate."

Kevin blinked, thunderstruck by the growing revelation that had just dawned on him. "What?"

"Yeah, I used to work for him as an engineer," Nate explained. "Then all this bullshit with CWCville and these…Electric Hedgehog Pokémon starts, my little brother disappears off the face of the earth, and the next thing I know, Ivo's become best friends with your little rebellion. After that Rosechu bitch put Jason in the hospital, Clyde and Jack decided to send me here with some goodies for you. There was a bit about a 'June Offensive' or something, but I wasn't really paying that much atten-" He stopped. "You okay, man? I didn't get your name."

A single tear rolled down Kevin's face as he stepped toward his older brother. "Kevin Shaw."

Silence fell, and lingered throughout the cargo bay for a good ten seconds. Neither of the two men, nor Matt, nor the other 4-cent personnel, could even speak. Nate's mouth dropped open with shock, and it looked as though he had just been told he'd won the lottery.

There was nothing more that needed to be said. Kevin and Nate lunged forward and hugged each other fiercely, tears spilling unchecked from their eyes. Matt simply stood back and watched with a shocked smile plastered across his face.

"What…the hell…happened to you?" gasped Nate as they broke apart. "First I get a call from Mom and Dad saying you were in some kind of terrorist attack, then you end up with Kel, then you've got a job as a mall cop…"

"Yeah, that's where we both started out," added Matt, and glanced at Kevin. "Let's just say it didn't end up too well for any of us."

"Yeah," agreed Kevin. "Look, I know you're probably wondering why I'm still alive…"

"Understatement of the _century_," replied Nate.

"…but we're kind of, well, to put it lightly, we're standing right in the middle of what's probably going to be the biggest clusterfuck we've ever seen." Kevin pointed to the two armed operatives. "And we need to get out of here, _now_. Who are you?"

"I'm Jessica," said the woman, "and this is Dev. We're their escort. Well, we _were_, anyway."

"We'll have to leave most of the heavy supplies," Dev explained. "Unless you brought a truck, there's no way we're getting all of this back to the city."

"Well, we can't leave it here for the loyalists, either," stated Matt bluntly. "So what do we do then, blow up the wreck?"

"And waste this much ammo?" Kevin gestured to the boxes behind him in disbelief. "Nate, you said something about a 'June Offensive'?"

Nate nodded. "Right. I think that was something relating to you guys. The PVCC, I mean."

The puzzle pieces fell together in Kevin's head in less than a second. "That's it. That's why they sent us all these weapons and supplies. An offensive. We're finally going to take the city."

"Well, we're not taking the city if we blow up this stash, and we're not taking the city if we give it to the mercs." Matt sat down and clasped his head in his hands. "Kevin…guys…look, I really don't see a way out of this that doesn't involve us _not_ taking the city. Look, all I want to do is just get the fuck out of this jungle and…"

"Actually…" Kevin patted his friend on the shoulder. "You just answered your own question."

Matt looked up, puzzled. "What?"

Kevin grinned and tossed him an AA-12 automatic shotgun from the adjacent crate. "Option Two. We give it to the mercs."

* * *

**East of CWCville, mountain/jungle area, plane crash site, passenger section**

"Sugar," Steve gasped in a distant-sounding voice, leaning against the wall betwixt the plane's passenger section and its front half as his eye drifted up and down. "Sugar? Here, girl."

"No luck up in the cockpit," Kuri reported as she stepped through the doorway. "The pilot's dead and there weren't any…" The Jerkop froze in her tracks, her mouth hanging open with shock as soon as she laid eyes on her delirious squad leader. "Steve? Steve, what's wrong? Let me see."

"Bites," coughed Steve, and held up his bandaged arm. Dropping her P90, Kuri hurriedly sat beside him and began gently peeling the soaked cloth wrappings away, revealing…

"Oh, _Arceus_," she swore as a sixteen-inch patch of torn bloody flesh appeared beneath the bandages, dotted with tiny puncture wounds from where the tiny Sonees and Roseys had sunk their teeth into Steve's arm. The worst of these were about the size of a C-Quarter, and swollen up with yellow pus like infected boils or malevolent tumors. Kuri was more than willing to bet that the miniaturized ferals' bites were similar to those of Komodo dragons – their saliva held so many pathogens that anything they bit would become seriously diseased and weakened. In any case, the progression of Steve's injury had now made their situation much more dismal.

"Okay, you just stay here and rest," Kuri instructed, trying to keep her hands from trembling too much as she wrapped up the infected wound again. Steve mumbled something unintelligible and grasped her arm with weak fingers, but she gently pushed it away, grabbed the P90, and rose to her feet. "Wait here. I'm gonna see if Kevin and Matt found any medicine."

Fighting to keep his fevered eye open, Steve leaned back and listened to Kuri's footsteps fading away into the plane's interior. Serge and Amanda were back there with Adrean and Ryan, and Kevin and Matt were down in the cargo bay. That left him as the sole lookout, and he didn't even have Sugar to keep him company. The honey badger was nowhere to be found, that was certain.

Outside, the jungle might as well have been pitch black. The Jerkop could just barely see through the darkened trees with his one remaining eye, and even then, the parts he could make out were the ones illuminated by firelight from the burning plane wreckage.

Then came the shadows on the slope.

"_Base Control, Predator Lead,"_ snarled a filtered voice from up ahead. Steve had to strain his ears to decipher the words. _"We've got a confirmed visual on the crash site. Snipers from Bravo team are in position along the ridge and we're heading in to check for live ones. Over."_

Swimming in what seemed like the absolute worst drunken haze he'd ever endured, the Jerkop quietly reached for his belt and unbuckled the strap on his revolver's holster. There was no point in trying to yell for help. Not when they were so close.

"_Yeah. Copy that, Base Control. Out,"_ the loyalist finished. _"Right. Silencers on. Stay on me."_

Steve let himself go limp, closing his eye just enough so that he could see the mercenaries making their way into the plane. There were four of them, all heavily armed with SPAS-12 shotguns and SCAR-H assault rifles and wearing camouflaged riot gear. One appeared to be female. They hadn't noticed him yet, probably counting him among the dead for now.

"_Damn,"_ swore the merc closest to Steve as he prodded a 4-cent_garbage operative's lifeless corpse with the snout of his assault rifle. _"Magi-Chan really did a number on these bastards."_

"_Wish he could've set it down somewhere closer," _growled another loyalist. _"This fuckin' jungle's giving me crotch rot. Another couple minutes and my dick's gonna fall off."_

"_For Arceus's sake, Lou, you can go take a piss once we're done with this room,"_ sighed Predator Lead. _"Just keep an eye on the door – if they're here, they're probably waiting for us."_

_Well, there goes the element of surprise,_ Steve thought to himself.

"_Clear,"_ Predator Lead announced after another fifteen seconds of searching. Steve hoped Kuri had one hell of a good explanation as to why finding a medical kit was taking so long. Not that it would matter if they shot him, though. At least his little ploy might still work.

"_Holy shit!"_ exclaimed the female mercenary. Steve heard footsteps approaching his position quickly. _"Is that…that's Howell, isn't it? Eye patch…yeah, that's it! We got Howell!"_

"_That's not Howell,"_ spat Predator Lead. _"Keep watching the doors. That's a Jerkop."_

"_What the fuck happened to his arm?"_ the woman asked, and bent down to examine it.

"_We're just gonna have to make sure his friends get equal treatment,"_ replied Predator Lead. _"Bravo Lead, Charlie Lead, Zap Lead, we got Jerkops. Repeat, we have Jerkops in the pl-"_

A loud clanging noise rang out from the floor next to Steve. He knew exactly what it was, but the female merc confirmed it a second later with a terrified scream. _"GRENADE! GET DOWN-"_

_CRACK!_ The flashbang exploded in a piercing blast of white light, instantly blinding Steve and sending an immense stabbing pain through his left eye. Through the high-pitched whine that now filled his ears, he could barely hear what sounded like muffled drumbeats all around him. It could only mean one thing.

After what seemed like hours of waiting, the shaking stopped, and Steve's vision and hearing slowly returned. All but one of the loyalists lay dead on the floor in pools of blood, their bodies riddled with buckshot and SMG rounds. The survivor, Predator Lead, had taken a shotgun blast to the gut, and even with his riot gear, the wound was still mortal. Coughing up blood and cursing under his breath, the merc desperately pulled himself toward his SCAR-H.

Steve shot the loyalist through the head before he could reach his weapon. Considering how the Jerkop's vision had deteriorated over the last five minutes, it was a miracle he'd even been able to lift the Python, let alone aim and fire it. The skin on his infected arm felt like a whole army of ants was crawling around just below the surface. It was like poison ivy, but somehow worse.

"Sugar…" the Jerkop coughed as he blacked out. "Sugar…"

* * *

**West CWCville, Get-Tar district, apartment block Dorazio, security office**

"Masks on!" instructed Zoey as she tore the pin off a tear gas grenade and tossed it around the corner, then reached for her gas mask. "Grenade out!"

Allie only managed to pull a gas mask over her mouth and nose before the apartment hallway filled with white, billowing smoke. The two Jerkops waited a few seconds for the gas to fill up the corridor, then lunged out from behind cover and crept forward, holding their weapons at the ready. Around them, the cries of panicked chu and human families fleeing for safety filled Dorazio like the screams of the damned. A group of shadowy figures burst out of an apartment door up ahead, and Allie instinctively took aim with Trogdor, ready to fry them into oblivion.

"Hold fire! Hold fire!" Zoey held up a fist as a human family – a husband, wife, and two kids - appeared from the smoke, coughing and crying as tear gas filled their lungs. "Are you okay?"

The man nodded, staring at her through watery, bloodshot eyes. "What's go-_cough_-going on?"

"Mandatory evacuation, sir," replied the Jerkop, and pointed to the nearest fire escape. "Get inside the donut shop and _keep your heads down_. There's gonna be a _lot_ of shooting tonight."

"Arceus bless you," coughed the woman, and hurried after her husband and children to safety.

Allie silently reminded herself once again that Dorazio was a shared apartment. This wasn't like the Soup Hotel purge, where they had free reign to cause as much chaos as possible. That may have been Al's long-term goal for their current assignment, but until all the human civilians were clear, she and Zoey had to be careful. She only hoped SUZI was sticking to her programming and not simply killing everything in sight…

_CRASH! _Zoey and Allie whirled around as the LIESA unit broke through the ceiling like a foot-and-a-half-tall steel meteor, piledriving an entire homebred Rosey into the floor and squishing the chu larva into pulp beneath her hydraulic stumpfeet as it let out a piercing squeal and died. Humming an adorable little tune that couldn't have been more inappropriate for her current situation, SUZI picked herself up off the gore-spattered floor and waddled over to the Jerkops.

"There you are!" exclaimed Zoey, and knelt beside her. "Where the hell have you been?"

"_I…uh…I was…"_ SUZI glanced left and right confusedly, then reached behind her back. _"I CAUGHT A HAMSTER!"_ Grinning, she withdrew a severed Sonee head, its huge lizard eyes wide open and staring up in horror at the smoky hallway. _"I named him Terry McFluffers!"_

"Right. Carry on." Zoey took a few steps backward, away from the gruesome scene. Allie merely smiled and gave the robotic Rosey a pat on the head.

_BOOM!_ The Jerkops looked up in surprise as a thunderous blast echoed through the apartment block. One of the fires either SUZI or Allie had started had most likely found its way to a gas pipe or propane tank. If the PVCC didn't already know about their little unofficial operation, they certainly would now.

"Okay, that's just the kind of thing we needed," said Zoey as she and Allie continued down the hallway. SUZI toddled after them, dragging the bloody Sonee head behind her. "Walsh'll probably send a few squads to check it out – we'll rendezvous with them once the EHPF arr-"

"WAAAAAAHHHHHH! WAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"That's more like it!" The Jerkop grinned sadistically and raised her AK-47 as a pair of adult chus burst through a door up ahead and ran, leaving their children behind to fend for themselves. Zoey fired off two bursts, one for each Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, and was rewarded with two agonized screams. The stricken Rosechu collapsed to the floor, writhing and gasping as she bled out in a matter of seconds, while the Sonichu managed to drag himself a few yards down the hall before he too joined his heartsweet in death. Zoey and Allie high-fived each other, and advanced.

"MOMMMMMMYYYYYY!" cried a pair of Roseys as they waddled out into the open, crying from the tear gas. Drawing her pistol, Allie took one down straight away with an excellent torso shot, fatally piercing its lungs and guts. Zoey ran forward and killed the other by smashing the stock of her assault rifle into the homebred's skull three times, cracking it like an eggshell.

"Look what I found!" Allie laughed cruelly as she lunged through the doorway and snatched up a little Sonee by its ears. The baby chu only had time to let out a piercing "WAAAAAHHHHH!" before the Jerkop forced the end of Trogdor's toothy mouth into its own and fired. The resulting explosion of burning flesh and fire messily ripped the infant apart, painting the doorway with a smoking slew of viscera and stub-limbs. Allie made sure to wipe off the muzzle when it cooled.

On the other side of the hall, SUZI had found an apartment that had fortunately been abandoned by its adult tenants. The familiar _crack-crack-crack_ of her dual machine guns echoed out the door and through the corridor, drowning out the shrill death screams of the Sonees and Roseys hiding inside. Glancing over her shoulder, Zoey saw a burning Sonee waddle out of the chaos, screaming and flailing around with its armstubs until SUZI reappeared with an entire table leg and swung it like a baseball bat, crushing the larva's head into a bloody, blazing mush.

_Too easy,_ she thought, kicking open the next door and gunning down a panicked Sonichu who was holding a Sonee in his arms. The baby shrieked in terror, but was quickly silenced when the Jerkop leapt into the apartment and snatched it by its stubby tail. Wailing and crying, the Sonee attempted to shock her, but before it could, Zoey grabbed both of its stumpfeet and pulled apart, as if tearing a sheet of paper. With a gurgling scream, the little chu was ripped in half from its crotch to its neck, its organs and intestines spilling out of the rift between its legs. Zoey dropped the spasming yellow fuzzball in disgust and set out to find the rest of the family. The muffled sobs and frightened crying from the bedroom made that particular task ridiculously easy.

"Hey! Allie!" called the Jerkop, and waved to her squadmate, who was busy setting a Rosey's skirt on fire and watching it hop around and squeal in pain. "Got an infested room here!"

Allie drew her knife and plunged it into the burning larva's throat, killing it instantly. "Copy that! How do you want 'em?"

"Extra crispy, please," Zoey replied with a cruel smile as Allie stepped past her, kicked the bedroom door down, and unleashed a blast of burning fuel at the occupants. The Rosechu flung up her arms to shield herself, but to no avail. The flames enveloped her in less than a second, setting her fur and dress on fire as the Sonee and Rosey beside her tumbled off the bed and waddled for the closet. Zoey let them get about three feet away from their dying mother before stepping in, ripping the Rosey's skirt off, and punting both larvae through the window, where they fell shrieking to their deaths on the hard concrete below.

"That'll wake 'em up," she chuckled, and wiped her bloody boots on the carpet.

* * *

**East of CWCville, mountain/jungle area, plane crash site, cargo bay**

"Holy _fuck_," gasped Matt as he eased Steve's limp body down the ladder and into the cargo bay. "He's burning up. What the hell did those little fuckers _do_ to him?"

"Sepsis," Nate Shaw answered in a worried voice. "I don't know much about medicine, but they gave us a few classes on basic first aid back in Tennessee. He needs some serious antibiotics, and fast." He glanced up at the stunned radioman. "Ryan, give me a hand here."

As Ryan and Nate placed the unconscious Jerkop on the cold metal floor and began unwrapping the pus-soaked bandages to treat his infected wound, Kevin, Matt, Amanda, Serge, Adrean, Dev, and Jessica quickly assembled around Kuri. With Steve out of the picture for now, she was in charge of the Honey Badgers. To say she was nervous would have been a huge understatement.

"Okay," Kuri began shakily. "Okay. I'm gonna make this short. They're all around us, Steve's down, and we've got three minutes at best before this plane turns into the Alamo. Any ideas?"

Kevin raised his hand and gestured to the immense stockpile of weaponry around them. "Last stand. We all grab as much ammo as possible and kill everything that tries to get inside."

Matt nodded and patted his new AA-12. "He's right. We can't make a break for it now – they'll probably have snipers on the ridge. So we'll fend off the first wave, set up a few Barretts, do a little counter-sniping, and there you go. We save the shipment and kill off enough mercs to…"

"Yeah. Great idea," interrupted Kuri. "Except for the fact that those guys probably have stronger radios than us. We start gaining the upper hand, and they'll call for backup. The last thing we want out here is some transport chopper coming in and…" Her eyes snapped open all the way as an idea formed in her head like a colossal bolt of lightning. A wicked grin spread across her face, and was mirrored by Kevin and Matt. "Brilliant. Fucking _brilliant_."

"Hold on." Amanda scratched her head. "We're bettin' all of this on a _chopper_? Did everyone just forget that these guys have the goddamn Chaotic Combo for backup?"

"We do enough damage and injure enough mercs, they might send an extraction team before that happens." Matt smiled. "So don't _kill_ all of them. Go for leg and shoulder shots, if you can."

"No guarantees," said Amanda, and grabbed up a six-barreled MGL grenade launcher to replace her old single-shot one. "Yo, Serge, you find anything good in there?"

"Serge found new Baba Yaga," grunted the huge Russian man as he heaved an entire M134 minigun out of a smashed weapon crate, along with a tripod. He tested the massive weapon's weight briefly, judging whether he'd be able to fire it while standing like Jesse Ventura in _Predator_, then shrugged and tucked the tripod under his arm just in case. "Is good."

"Right. Be careful where you point that thing," cautioned Dev. "We brought a few of those in for you guys to mount on your trucks. The ammo's over there."

"Right! Here's how we'll do this," announced Kuri. "Kevin and Matt, you cover the left side, Jessica and Dev, you take the right. Serge, set that thing up in the chassis to cover the rear. Amanda, take the cockpit. Adrean, you and I are gonna move around the plane and suppress anything we see out those windows."

"What about us?" asked Ryan as he poured a bottle of water over Steve's arm to clear out the infected pus. Nate inserted a needle into the bloody flesh and pressed down, sending some much-needed antibiotics into the Jerkop's bloodstream.

"Keep watching him," Kuri instructed. "If one of us runs out of ammo or gets hurt, you're our medics and our resupply team. In the meantime…just stay down here for now."

Nate nodded, but Kevin could have sworn he saw Ryan's jaw clench. The man was a hero to the PVCC and a known Sonee and Rosey killer – it was _highly_ unlikely that he'd end up following an order to stay hidden when there was a potential news story in the making here.

"This isn't gonna be an easy fight," the Jerkop finished, and grabbed two extra magazines for her P90. "Let's just hope to Arceus that it works. I'll see you topside. Good lu-"

Kuri's speech was abruptly interrupted by the sudden, terrible rattle of distant gunfire, punctuated with crackling electrical discharges. Above the sunken cargo bay, beyond the fading wall of firelight from the burning wreckage, the first wave of mercenary soldiers and EHPF officers advanced in a circle toward the crash site, firing on the downed plane and closing off all remaining avenues of escape for the besieged Jerkops as they advanced.

Kevin automatically reached for yet another AK-47 magazine and clipped it onto his combat belt as his squadmates and comrades dashed for the ladder. He had a feeling he was going to need the extra ammo now more than ever…especially if the Honey Badgers intended to survive the night.

* * *

**West CWCville, Get-Tar district, apartment block Dorazio**

The fire alarm's shrill blare cut through the burning apartments at an earsplitting intensity, nearly drowning out the harsh reports of assault rifle fire from Zoey's AK-47 and the piteous screams of wounded and dying Sonichus, Rosechus, and their homebred spawn. Outside, a new set of loud sounds had joined the cacophony – the whining _eeeeeeEEEEEEeeeeee_ of EHPF cruiser sirens.

Surprisingly, the Chaotic Combo and the city's board of directors hadn't deemed the assault on Dorazio enough of a priority to warrant attention from their private army of loyalist mercenaries. Either Magi-Chan hadn't taken the bait, or perhaps the hired guns were busy elsewhere. The last survivors of Dorazio, a pair of Sonees and a Rosechu, had barely managed to escape after Allie had nailed the Sonichu in the back of the head with two 9mm rounds and Zoey had bayonetted the other three babies – two Roseys and a Sonee – as they waddled away screaming. It was a perfect cherry on top of the death sundae the Jerkops had prepared for the city of CWCville.

Surprisingly, only two human casualties were reported, and both were nonlethal - the result of a panicked Thundershock from one of the EHPF officers surrounding the block. The very shaken father and his daughter were currently being treated for severe electrical burns by an on-site volunteer medical team. The hospitals themselves – the major ones like CWCville General, at least – had long ago been converted into chu-only establishments, given the species' innate aptitude for being a massive danger to themselves and those around them. Human citizens relied on these groups of vigilante doctors, surgeons, and nurses for free emergency treatment, though regular health care itself was totally restricted to Electric Hedgehog Pokémon and their babies.

Zoey was just impressed that SUZI's malfunction hadn't caused any civilian deaths whatsoever. Given that the Jerkops weren't even supposed to be wreaking havoc in the Get-Tar district, it was a small miracle they'd been able to clear out the building with minimal collateral damage. In any case, the game had now changed from slaughter to shootout, and sooner or later, she and Allie would have to deal with the incredibly likely possibility of an EHPF counterattack.

The high-pitched screech of a riot control megaphone activating split the air. Zoey sighed and rolled her eyes as she nodded to Allie and stepped toward the nearest fire escape. This was how the EHPF did everything…a long and tiresome debate, then zapping. Trying to reason with the chus was one thing…but negotiating with them…that was a whole different level of irritating.

"_We…uh…we have y'all surrounded!"_ a Sonichu's nasal, bravado-laden voice echoed through the apartment. _"Come out with your hands up and surrender all hostages! We're warning you!"_

Zoey picked up a dead Rosey, drew her knife, and carved the words "YOU ARE ALL HOMOS" into its belly. Winking at Allie, she took a step forward and hurled the baby chu's corpse out over the sidewalk, where its skirtachute activated and allowed the improvised message to drift down into the city. There was a moment of silence, followed by a score of horrified gasps, angry yells, and bleeped-out curses from the Sonichus on the street below.

"_I AM STRAIGHT! I WAS NEVER A HOMOSEXUAL!" _screamed the negotiator. _"THOSE ARE ALL FALSE RUMORS FROM THE GOD DANG TROLLS AND SUCH DANG MISLABELING PEOPLE! ALL OF THE SONICHUS AND ROSECHUS ARE STRAIGHT! I DO NOT CARE FOR YOUR COMMENTS OF MISLABELINGS!"_

The Jerkops collapsed laughing, while SUZI wirelessly downloaded an MP3 file of "It's Okay To Be Gay" and began projecting it out into the city from her powerful cheekspot speakers. Allie could only imagine just how worked up the EHPF were getting…and frankly, she preferred it to be that way. It made the chus more apt to make mistakes, and considering that they had the two women outnumbered at least five to one, any additional advantages were good advantages.

"On the count of three, start shooting," Zoey chuckled, and ejected her half-spent magazine. Grabbing the curved object as it fell, she reached into her pocket and began sliding unfired AK-47 bullets in to replace the spent ones. Allie shouldered Trogdor and grabbed her Beretta, then did likewise and slid a fresh clip into the handle. "One."

"_In the name of Mayor Christian Weston Chandler, the Mayor of CWCville, I demand you stop these BASELESS MISLIBEGATIONS and admit that you are WRONG, and we are STRAIGHT!"_

"Two," continued Zoey, and stepped onto the balcony, clicking the AK's fire rate up to full auto.

"_If you stop hurting the little babies, take back all your disgusting HOMO labelings, and confess in the sight of God and the Bear to your sins as dirty Jerkop TROLLS, we, uh, we won't zap you! You'll be given community service to make up for your crimes against the good, straight Electr-"_

_CRASH! BOOM!_

"Thr-" began the Jerkop, but immediately stopped as a thunderous explosion and a screech of metal scraping on asphalt reached her ears, bringing with it an enormous plume of black oily smoke. Eager to see what had happened, Zoey and Allie rushed to the edge of the fire escape balcony and peered down toward the EHPF blockade in the street. Half of the cars had been smashed aside by what appeared to be an entire dump truck, which happened to also be on fire. Two EHPF officers had been set alight, their fur smoldering and blazing as their comrades tried unsuccessfully to extinguish the flames. Further back up the street, two pickup trucks with mounted machine guns screeched to a halt and disgorged their Jerkop occupants, who quickly set about raining a heavy hail of gunfire toward the panicked and surprised Sonichus.

Allie smiled in relief as she grabbed her monocular and zoomed in on the attacking operatives, noting the symbols on their badges and armbands. It was a comforting view, to say the least. If Walsh was taking this disruption serious enough to warrant dispatching both the Spikes of Blue and the Red Devils as response teams, then she and Zoey were definitely doing _something_ right.

"Down! Down!" yelled Zoey, and vaulted over the balcony down to the lower level before Allie could say anything. Impressed by her squad leader's athleticism, the Jerkop chose the more conservative route and hurried down the fire escape after Zoey while gunshots and zaps filled the street below. They were only two floors up, and it wasn't a long way down at all.

The Honey Badgers slid down the last ladder to the street one by one and landed right in the middle of the melee. Panic and chaos saturated the night air as the attacking Jerkops hemmed in their prey in a classic pincer move, suppressing the majority of the EHPF Sonichus with a wall of flying bullets. Zoey slid into cover behind the apartment's dumpster, pressed her AK-47 to her shoulder, and added the assault rifle's harsh voice to the chorus. Allie, lacking the weapon range or skill to take down any officers from such a distance, contented herself with performing a fiery extermination on a pack of feral Sonees and Roseys who had been trapped inside the dumpster during their never-ending quest for food and candy. The phrase "fish in a barrel" came to mind.

As Allie gleefully barbecued the baby chus alive, Zoey glanced up to see SUZI paraskirting down to join them. She loosed off a quick burst of suppression fire from her AK-47, then held out an arm and caught the descending LIESA unit. SUZI's eye-screens instantly changed to their happy blue color as she giggled and clapped her armstubs together.

"Well, looks like _you_ had fun tonight," commented the Jerkop, and placed her on the ground. She noticed that SUZI was no longer carrying the severed Sonee head. "Where's Terry McFluffers?"

The robotic Rosey sniffled, and a digital tear formed in her left eye-screen. _"He moved to Kyrgyzstan and got a job as a panda!"_ She looked up eagerly at Zoey. _"Can I be a panda?"_

"No," Zoey responded flatly, and switched back to semi-auto to take a potshot at an exposed chu.

"_Then can I be a sugar glider?"_ persisted SUZI.

"No!"

"_How 'bout an anteater?"_

"Fine!" Zoey fired twice, sending the Sonichu running for cover. "Sure! Go nuts! Now _shut up_!"

"_YAAAAAAAAY!"_ shrieked the combat drone in immense joy, and promptly ran face-first into the nearest wall and toppled over onto her back with a loud _clang_.

Allie dropped down from the top of the dumpster, leaving the few surviving ferals to scream and burn to death inside their metal coffin. "Have I ever mentioned just how much I _love_ this job?"

"Save it for the ride home," instructed Zoey. She shouldered the AK and led her squadmate and a very dizzy SUZI out into the open from behind their makeshift barricade. "I think that's enough of a distraction for Al to do…whatever." She tossed over her radio. "Call him up and give him the good news. I think I speak for both of us when I say I want some fucking answers."

Allie obediently clicked on the walkie-talkie and adjusted it to the Honey Badgers' squad frequency. "Honey Badger Command, it's us. Al, come back, over."

"_Copy that, ladies,"_ Al replied in an immensely satisfied voice. In the background, Allie could hear what sounded like muffled yells, as well as a loud thumping, as if a large group of people was banging on a barricaded door. _"Don't worry. We got what we came here for."_

"And…what _was_ that, exactly?" Zoey asked loudly as the pair of them made their way back to the parked truck by the donut shop, narrowly avoiding being spotted by Ken Miller of the Red Devils. "I think it's about time you told us what exactly you've been doing while we were…"

"_For Arceus's sake, stop it, Ledger!"_ a familiar voice shouted. _"You know what's gonna happen if you send him in against…oh, hell, for all we know, you just killed our most valuable asset…"_

"_Listen, Evan,"_ Al replied calmly, _"I don't like the way this is going any more than you do, but for all I know, six of my Jerkops and an entire Wilderness squad are fighting for their lives out there to bring back something I don't even know about."_ He paused. _"And on the contrary, I haven't killed our most valuable asset at all. I simply asked him to help save MY most valuable assets. And if you ask me…he seemed rather eager to see his soon-to-be brother-in-law again."_

* * *

**East of CWCville, mountain/jungle area, plane crash site**

"Down! Get down!" yelled Matt as he leapt away from the window and pulled Kevin out of the way, just before a burst of assault rifle fire tore across the hull of the plane and ricocheted, nearly killing Jessica over on the other side. "Put another one out there on the treeline!"

Kevin was beginning to feel rather glad that he'd added an underslung grenade launcher to his AK-47 down in the cargo bay. With so many trees and the darkened jungle adding to the already poor visibility around the plane, the explosive shells were really the only way he could hit anything through all the chaos. Bracing the assault rifle against his shoulder, he held out the weapon towards Matt, who quickly pushed a fresh 40mm grenade down into the launcher's smoking barrel. Kevin gritted his teeth as more SMG rounds and what felt like a shotgun blast ricocheted off their makeshift bunker. With so much fire coming in, it would be an absolute miracle if he managed to kill something.

"Cover!" he shouted. Matt jammed the AA-12's snout through the window and unloaded a thunderous triple burst of buckshot at a group of shadows in the trees. Taking advantage of the window, Kevin rose to his feet and clicked the launcher's trigger, sending the propelled explosive up in a shallow arc toward the advancing loyalists. He barely had time to confirm at least one direct hit before one of the merc's friends lobbed a flashbang at the shattered window. Fortunately for the Jerkops, it bounced off and exploded on the ground, inadvertently blinding some of the nearby attackers and giving Kevin and Matt enough of a break to reload.

"How's it going over here?" Kuri asked as she and Adrean slammed into the wall beside them, each selecting a window to suppress the loyalist soldiers from. Kevin nodded a brief hello, then sent a shotgun-wielding merc running for cover with a dual burst from his AK. On the edge of the line of sight, he could see two more dragging a wounded squadmate to safety.

"What the hell are you doing? Don't touch the walls!" Matt barely managed to yank both of the Jerkops away from the conductive metal. Two seconds later, a Thundershock seared across the window, inches away from electrocuting Kevin as he leapt back to safety. Thus far into the siege, the EHPF support units had been working in tandem with their loyalist comrades, shocking the plane at full blast to keep the Jerkops on edge while the significantly deadlier human mercenaries rained down a lead hailstorm upon the PVCC defenders.

Through the harsh orchestra of distant gunfire and muted explosions, Kevin could hear the rattling buzz of Serge's new Baba Yaga firing away at the merc squads assaulting the passenger segment. Though it had been an absolute nightmare for him to set up, the loyalists now found themselves faced with six spinning barrels of death and a seemingly never-ending barrage of anti-personnel rounds that Ryan and Nate were feeding to Serge through a hole in the cargo bay ceiling. They'd managed to link together several dozen feed belts into one long line, meaning that the huge Jerkop could keep firing to his heart's content…or until the ammo supply ran out.

They still hadn't heard any good news from below. Steve's vitals had stabilized, but he was still unconscious and pretty much useless in his recuperating state. Kevin only hoped they could hold out long enough for the squad leader to recover and find a way to get them the fuck out of the jungle in one piece. Except…given Steve's earlier attitude toward the mission, he wasn't sure if that was even a possibility now.

What _was_ a possibility, however, was the inevitable death of everyone on the plane if they didn't fight off the loyalist assault. There was no sign that the mercs had called in a transport chopper for backup – if anything, their numbers appeared to be endless. Kevin had to hand it to the Chaotic Combo…they were quite a lot more effective than Chandler at cracking down on PVCC activity. But that didn't mean he was any less motivated to kill as many loyalists as possible.

"How in the holy mother of _fuck_ did they even get out here?" yelled Amanda from up in the cockpit, and blasted a Sonichu into bloody oblivion with a pair of quick-fired grenades.

"Dropped off at the highway, probably!" answered Jessica. "Shit! Dev, get that one on the right!"

"My pleasure." Dev turned and nailed a merc on the arm, then put a prolonged burst into the man's head and neck to make sure he wouldn't rise again. "Confirmed kill! We're up to ten!"

Kevin raised his AK to fire again, but was interrupted by a pained roar from Serge. Kuri glanced over her shoulder. "Kevin! Adrean! Go check if he's…"

"On it!" shouted Adrean, and pulled Kevin after him. "Come on!"

Rounding the corner into the passenger section, both Jerkops were immediately greeted by a disheartening sight. Serge sat cowering behind Baba Yaga's makeshift emplacement, his beefy forearm dripping blood onto his pants from a deep bullet wound while a trio of mercenaries suppressed him with a concentrated volley of SMG fire.

In the split second before the loyalists noticed that their target had now gained two additional reinforcements, Kevin somehow, unbelievably, managed to drop one with a pure impulse shot as he squeezed the trigger reflexively, scoring a direct hit on the soldier's abdomen and painting the tree behind him with a splash of dark blood. The other two loyalists dropped to the ground in shock and returned fire, but not before Kevin and Adrean had successfully taken cover.

"Fucking _amazing_ shot!" laughed the Chupacabra operative. "Were you even aiming for him?"

"I don't know and I don't care!" Kevin snatched his last 40mm grenade and slid it into the launcher. "Let's see them dodge one of these!"

"Fabulous, hon!" Adrean rose and began firing off shell after shell. "Let 'em have it!"

Grinning,Kevin squeezed the trigger and watched as the explosive round soared out of the plane and curved straight down toward the unsuspecting mercenaries. It was an absolutely perfect shot.

_THWIP! BOOM!_

"The _fuck_…" Kevin's mouth fell open as something slashed through the air like a spinning green discus, neatly slicing the airborne grenade in half and detonating it mere milliseconds before it would have annihilated the entrenched loyalists. A shadow dropped down in front of the fireball, landing on its feet and one hand as it eyed the Jerkops with a predatory glare. Adrean and Kevin raised their weapons, but the thing lashed out with what looked like a pair of tentacles and tore down the ceiling, cutting off the last avenue of escape the Jerkops could have used. Serge just managed to stumble away seconds before the falling hunk of metal would have crushed him.

"What the hell just happened?" yelled Kuri. "You guys okay? Anyone hurt?"

_CRASH!_

Kevin flung out an arm to steady himself as something huge and heavy rocked the plane around like a plastic toy. Amanda's horrified scream rang out from the front of the plane, and through the violent tremors, the Jerkop could see his squadmate leap out of the way before the thing peeled open the cockpit like tinfoil and leapt inside, along with two EHPF officers.

"Oh, son of a bitch," he breathed as he recognized the newcomer. Now it all made sense. The two dead Chupacabras, the ambush back in the deep jungle…

The mercs hadn't needed to call in a chopper. They'd been working with Wild Sonichu himself.

As Amanda struggled to reload her grenade launcher, Dev and Matt both instinctively hurled a stun grenade apiece at the three Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. Without even flinching, Wild raised his hands and fired out a pair of vines, grabbing the airborne explosives and hurling them out of the way before they could burst.

"None of that, Jerkops!" yelled the green Sonichu as he snapped into a ridiculous combat stance. "Zap them! Take these dirty trolls alive! We can let Bubbles have some fun with th-"

"_INCOMING!"_ a merc's terrified scream echoed through the jungle. _"SIR, WATCH YOUR-"_

_HRRRREEEEEEEEEE!_ The mechanical screech of a whining motor filled the plane as what looked like a massive whirling drill sliced up from the metal floor, right beneath where Wild was standing. As the Jerkops and the Sonichus watched in astonishment, another Electric Hedgehog Pokémon burst through the floor and tackled the Chaotic Combo member around the chest, sending both combatants crashing out of the side of the plane and into the burning wreckage.

Kuri lunged forward with her P90 raised. The foremost Sonichu reacted quickly, slamming her with a powerful kick that sent the Jerkop flying backward into the wall. Kevin was already back on his feet as the other chu unleashed a Thundershock into Dev and Jessica's bodies. Their rubber boots helped to dampen the voltage, but both 4-cent operatives were still floored by the sheer force of the electrical attack. Matt managed to fire off a single blast before the Sonichu that had crippled Kuri zapped his AA-12, forcing him to drop it.

"HEY!"

_BOOM!_ The other Sonichu screamed in pain as Adrean unloaded a shell full of buckshot into its stomach. Wasting no time, the Jerkop hurled the shotgun at the wounded chu and sprinted toward him, drawing his baseball bat with his free hand. Kevin raised his AK-47, but the first EHPF officer was already turning around to save his comrade…

Three thunderous reports rang out as Steve appeared out of the ladder to the cargo bay and blasted the chu with what looked like a sleek-looking black revolver, scoring two hits in its chest and another in the crotch. Choking and gasping, the Sonichu sank to its knees just as Adrean slammed into his comrade and dealt it a vicious smash with his baseball bat. _THUNK!_ The wounded EHPF officer's skull shattered beneath the first strike, spraying blood across the cockpit as the Jerkop rained down blow after blow on the weeping Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

"Someone want to tell me _what the hell just happened_?" yelled Patrick Ryan as Matt helped him and Nate Shaw up the ladder. The radioman carried two handguns, his own and Steve's revolver.

"Later!" Kuri responded shakily, and rose to her feet, clutching her bruised ribs. "Why…why haven't they pressed the attack…holy shit! _STEVE_?"

"You mean, why aren't we all dead now?" Steve laughed as he snapped open the black revolver's cylinder and swapped out the spent bullets, then holstered the weapon and drew a brand new XM8 assault rifle from his shoulder strap. "No fucking clue. Let's go ask 'em."

* * *

"You'll never get your filthy drills on my sweetheart, you villainous troll!" yelled Wild Sonichu as he dragged himself to his feet, clutching at his bleeding shoulder to let his regenerative powers go to work. "GodJesus has brought Simonla Rosechu to me! Who are you to…"

"Who am I?" Simonchu spat, his eyes blazing with fury behind his red goggles. "I'm the reason you're even _in_ Date Ed! Your little sweetheart's just a walking, talking copyright infringement! Without me, there wouldn't even _be _a Simonla! WHO THE HELL DO YOU THINK I AM?!"

"You're…you're _nothing_!" Wild hurled a storm of Razor Leaves toward the brown Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, but Simonchu merely swept a wall of packed earth in front of the barrage. "Simonla is the true and original creation of my father, Mayor Christian Weston Chandler, and NOT the original property of the troll Evan Christopher GeeeeeEEEEAAAAAAGGGHHH!"

"Give me your wretched mate," growled Simonchu as Wild flew backward, his jaw gushing blood from where the jagged chunk of stone had smashed his face. "Give her to me and let the Jerkops go, and I'll let you live. Keep resisting, and…" Leaping forward, he activated his drill and drove it into the green Sonichu's hand, piercing glove and flesh in a whirling storm of metal.

"AAAAAAAGGGHHHHH! Die, you _MONSTER_!"

"Shut up." Simonchu conjured a jagged rock spear from the earth and hurled it toward an EHPF officer, impaling the chu through the gut and pinning it to a tree. Whirling around as Wild wept and clutched his bleeding hand, the armored Sonichu threw his arms out to the sides as the ground itself exploded beneath him, sending a vicious shockwave tearing through the Sonichus and mercenaries. Glancing toward the plane, he could see the PVCC operatives making their way out of their makeshift bunker and into the surrounding wreckage, firing in every direction as more loyalists closed in. Plunging back into the ground, Simonchu drilled his way over to the plane and burst forth, spinning around and around in midair like a dervish as he called up massive sheets of granite to shield the Jerkop defenders.

Two bullets pinged off Simonchu's armor as the mercenary snipers took aim from the ridge. Cursing under his breath, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon leapt onto the plane and readied himself for a long-distance drill attack…but was immediately denied the opportunity when the frenzied Wild sent him flying backwards into a tree with a double Vine Whip.

"Ouch," he coughed, and spat out a mouthful of blood. Wild, however, was already airborne and heading right for him to deliver a crippling smash. Simonchu quickly burrowed down and came up with another rock sheet, just in time to knock the flying chu out of the air. Using the few precious seconds he had before Wild recovered, the PVCC auxiliary pounced on a nearby pair of loyalist mercenaries, annihilating both men with a savage double drill punch through their chests. Kevlar and riot gear may have worked against small-arms fire…but not against him.

"SIMONCHUUUUUUUUUU!" shrieked Wild in unmatched rage as he tore back through the jungle, leaping from tree to tree in a manner more befitting a spider monkey than a hedgehog. "I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL BREAK YOU DEAD, YOU TRAITOROUS TROLL!"

"And I'll show you," Simonchu snarled, raising his bloody drills, "the power of the human race."

* * *

"Thank fucking Arceus for Project Asperchu!" yelled Steve in utter gratitude as he leaned the XM8 out from behind the rock shield and gunned down a panicked Sonichu. "Ryan, you are gonna have one _hell_ of a story when we get home!"

"Damn straight, Morrison!" Patrick Ryan shouted back. Out in the open and armed with akimbo handguns, the radioman was _far_ more dangerous than Kevin would have expected. Already Ryan had scored a pair of merc kills, and judging by his aim, was well on the way to adding a Sonichu to the list.

His heart pounding with relief and exhilaration, Kevin spun from left to right, firing his AK at anything yellow that he could see, while Nate blasted away at the distant merc sharpshooters with a night vision-equipped Barrett .50 caliber sniper rifle he'd dragged up from the cargo bay. Adrean and Kuri had taken cover on the left side of the crash site to suppress the enemy advance, Serge was busy trying to set up Baba Yaga in the plane's cockpit while Amanda covered him, and Jessica and Dev were quickly proving 4-cent_garbage's value in the war effort with a fierce and unrelenting assault on the panicked and confused loyalists. They weren't out of the frying pan yet, but the fire had been severely doused by the arrival of their powerful reinforcement.

As the battle raged through the jungle, Simonchu and Wild continued their vicious duel, only pausing when the auxiliary chu took a few seconds off to kill another merc or EHPF officer foolish enough to get too close. Kevin tried to focus on the firefight at hand, but found it nearly impossible to concentrate while the two Electric Hedgehog Pokémon clashed again and again around him and his comrades.

"YES!" Matt punched him on the arm with vicious glee and pointed to the sky as the distant sound of rotors filled the air. "CHOPPER! CHOPPER COMING IN, NINE O'CLOCK!"

A thunderclap sounded across the crash site as Nate fired the Barrett again, nearly decapitating a merc who was running for cover behind some trees. "Holy Arceus…we did it."

"Almost," replied Kevin, and popped the empty magazine out of his AK-47. "Good shooting, Nate. Get a bead on the pilot as soon as it lands. Steve!"

"Yeah?" The blond Jerkop quickly swapped his XM8 for the black revolver and blasted what appeared to be an incendiary round away into the night sky. Only when the glowing projectile exploded in a geyser of white phosphorous did Kevin realize it was some sort of miniature flare.

"What are we gonna do about that chopper?"

Steve dashed over to him while loading another flare shell into the revolver. "I just let them know where we are. Who do you think they're gonna try and help, the shadowy guys with the guns or the shadowy guys with the guns who sent up a rescue flare? How's our guest?"

Kevin smiled and patted the canteen with the miniature Sonee inside. "He's alive…and scared shitless, judging by the smell. What about you? You sure you're okay?"

"Believe me, I've been worse," replied Steve, and pointed to his eye patch. "Much worse." He glanced up as the transport chopper – a dual-rotor Chinook - descended through the trees and into the clearing, its spotlights scanning the crash site. If all went well, the loyalists on board wouldn't realize they were landing right on top of the Honey Badgers until…

"COMO ESTAN, BITCHES!" yelled Joshua Martinez, and leapt out of the Chinook's rear bay with Lori Lopez hot on his heels and cradling an RPG in her arms. Kevin and Steve watched in utter disbelief as the Chupacabras disembarked and took up positions around the wreckage to reinforce the Jerkops and their allies as their chopper touched down. "Adrean! ADREAN!"

"Where the hell have you been, you utter _bastard_?" Adrean shouted as he sprinted forward and nearly tackled his squad commander with a ferocious hug. "How did you…"

Lopez chuckled and patted the rocket launcher. "We forced it to land and took out the guys they sent to take _you_ out." She pointed to the approaching Simonchu, who by now had successfully forced Wild to beat an unceremonious retreat. "Looks like you already got some help, though."

Steve rose to his feet, a look of utter gratitude on his face as he stepped forward and offered a hand to the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. "Steve Morrison, Honey Badgers."

"Simonchu," the auxiliary chu replied, and stowed the drill on his right hand to shake Steve's. "Your commander sends his regards. Apparently, he thought your lives were valuable enough to risk breaking into the Asperpedia labs." He glanced around at the chaos and grinned. "For what it's worth…I'll vouch for Ledger if Mary Lee Walsh court-martials him. That was _fun_."

"Well, I can see _you_ certainly enjoyed it," commented Steve, and looked down at his savior's bloodstained drill. "If you wouldn't mind taking out the rest, we can start loading the chopper."

"With pleasure." Simonchu reactivated his right drill and submerged himself into the dirt once again. Kevin followed the small tremor with his eyes until it crossed out of the line of sight, then turned back to his squad leader expectantly.

Steve nodded to him, then waved to Joshua Martinez. "How much weight can that thing take?"

"The chopper?" Martinez glanced at the Chinook. "A lot more than us and your squad. Why?"

"There's a shitload of ammo in the cargo bay of that plane," the blond Jerkop explained with a grim smile. "And if it all fits inside your chopper, I'd say we're all in for one hell of a mission accomplished…SUGAR!"

"Grrowr," snarled the honey badger as she emerged from a burrow beneath the destroyed cockpit and trotted over to Steve, then began nuzzling his leg. She'd been hiding there for the duration of the firefight, most likely after she'd caught the scent of the incoming loyalist forces.

The Jerkop knelt and picked up the honey badger, petting her fur affectionately. He looked up at Martinez. "Sorry about that. By the way, do the words 'June Offensive' mean anything to you?"

A grim expression spread across the squad commander's face. "Nope. But I've got two dead Jerkops who need avenging, though. Today was a start. June…we'll see, Morrison. We'll see."

Kevin nudged Nate as Steve and Josh shook hands and began planning out the loading procedure for their new cargo. "Okay. _Now_ we can start catching up."

"Thought you'd never ask, little bro," replied Nate with a smile.

* * *

**April 30, 2008, north CWCville, Menchi-Nasu HQ, administrator meeting room**

"You put a lot of lives at risk with that stunt," Mary Lee Walsh said in a disapproving tone, pacing back and forth behind her podium as she shuffled through an immense stack of shipping manifests the Honey Badgers had recovered from the plane wreck, along with the truly immense load of weapons, ammunition, and other supplies the resistance would need to launch a massive strike at the very heart of CWCville. "I'm surprised at you – disobeying a direct order like that. You never struck me as the rebellious type. That 'soldier side' of yours must be wearing off."

"To the best of my knowledge, ma'am, no such direct order was ever given," replied Al. "As a matter of fact, one might say we were rather…lacking…in the specifics of our assignment. I simply filled in the blanks and used my best judgment on how to proceed. That's what we were trained to do in tense combat situations during Desert Storm." He smiled. "Of course, like I said, I take full responsibility for my actions in disrupting the progress of Project Asperchu, as well as…hmm…_compromising_…our finest Electric Hedgehog Pokémon support unit."

"Cut the façade, Ledger," continued Walsh impatiently. "_This_…" she pointed to the sheaf of papers, "…is the sole reason we haven't assigned your entire team to a month's worth of recon. That, and the June Offensive." She stopped, and gazed at the Jerkop commander with stern pride. "Yes, I'm sure your lieutenant or one of his operatives already told you what that engineer told them. The shipment was meant to touch down at a nearby airport just outside of the city, where the 4-cent_garbage personnel would then sneak the supplies in through the tunnel Patrick Ryan found on his little underground excursion. That's why we needed him as the civilian liaison."

"Makes sense." Al scratched his chin. "That's a step in the right direction, then. I trust we'll be briefed well in advance for this June Offensive? I'd hate for us…" He narrowed his eyes. "…_any_ of us…to have to improvise a more radical solution due to our lack of information."

"Duly noted. Please don't do that again," cautioned Walsh. "It makes me feel like Chandler. Of course, he's got Magi-Chan running things now, so what do _I_ know about the way retards' and recolors' brains work? In any case, we just brought up a good point concerning how a lack of information could apply to the chus." She clenched a fist, popping her knuckles. "Magi-Chan Sonichu. Take him out, and we sever all links between the Combo. That's the mistake Silvana made when she pulled that little embarrassment at the beach. Without Magi-Chan, we could've taken out Bubbles _and_ regained control over Blake. That's why I'm sending Silvana after the Great Anticlimactic One himself…and _you're_ going to be her ground support team."

"Us?" Al was taken aback. "_Just_ us?"

"Well, you, the White Medallions, maybe another squad or two. It depends on how well Silvana does against Magi-Chan. You'll have full air support if need be – provided Angelica doesn't keep them all too busy." Walsh allowed herself a faint smile as she ended the lecture. "Ledger, I know you're not happy with the way things have been going since you and your squad stepped out of the Warp. Believe me, none of us are. I'm actually surprised you didn't try something like this earlier." She shrugged. "Guess it was just my luck you decided to go rogue on the one day we needed a bit of independence. Now get some sleep, and don't bother setting your alarms."

"Thank you, ma'am." The Legend saluted sharply, turned, and walked to the door. _Could have been worse. Matt Devoria worse. Good Arceus, remember those idiots he forced to clean the…_

"Al?" Mary Lee Walsh's voice changed as soon as she clicked the recorder off. It was no longer the voice of a PVCC administrator, but rather, the voice of a kind and understanding teacher who had been forced to bear the weight of an entire resistance organization on her shoulders.

Al turned around. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Good job out there today," finished Walsh. "As far as I'm concerned, your operatives can keep the weapons they found. Morrison would throw a hissy-fit if I took away his new toys, anyway. And help yourself to one as well. Arceus knows, you're going to need it for June. Dismissed."

"Thank you, ma'am," repeated the Legend, and turned to leave again.

"One more thing, Al."

Al could have screamed. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Enough with the 'ma'am's. We've known each other for four…eight years. My name is _Mary_."

The Jerkop commander smiled. "Yes, Mary."


	14. Chapter 10: The June Offensive

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 10: The June Offensive**

**Guest writers: Alcoholic-Legend and marsmar**

**June 4, 2008, 8:20 a.m., CWCville northern district, Menchi-Nasu, Honey Badger barracks**

At summer's rise, the days were still as long and as hot and as sunny as they had been during Spring Break. As the sun rose and the first birds began to sing, dawn came to CWCville gently, bathing the fortified high-school-turned-PVCC-HQ in rosy orange rays of light. Without a cloud in the sky, it was more than obvious that the day was going to be an absolutely beautiful one.

And Al was just lying there in his cot, curled over, hugging onto his pillow, knowing full well that in less than four hours, the June Offensive would begin. This was one of those very rare days when he actually regretted having downed one of his bottles of private reserve Scotch the night before, after his Jerkops had all drifted off to bed. Al barely remembered those nervous hours in the dark, sipping at glass after glass of the dizzyingly strong liquid and wondering how on earth he was going to stay focused for what would soon be the final battle of the CWCville revolution.

"Come on, you lazy bastard! Get up!" Steve jokingly berated him for the third time in the last five minutes. Al rolled over and continued to ignore his lieutenant's demands. The hangover was making his head throb, anyway.

"Come on, Al, answer me!" the blond Jerkop continued, and shook his commander forcefully.

"I don't feel good… I have a hangover from last ni-"

"Al," groaned Steve, rolling his eye, "you _always_ have a hangover from _every_night. Just because you started the whole damn squad doesn't give you the right to just lie around and do noth-"

"Fine, fine, I'm getting up!" Al conceded, realizing he had to do something every once in a while.

Usually whenever Al was around his squadmates, they usually treated him with the utmost respect. They called him "The Legend" and considered him to be the chief authority on chu slaying. The sad truth was that they only saw Al at his best, which wasn't even that good to begin with. Only Steve knew him for what he really was…

A slothful drunk with almost no ambition left to motivate him.

It was true that he still derived great joy from chu slaying, especially the larvae. But still, the daily routines at Menchi-Nasu and the PVCC in general were killing him slowly, from the inside out, eating away at him like some highly-corrosive acid. Whether it was working on fixing the Battle Bus, forging some new mechanical contraption or weapon for his squad to use against the chus, or discussing new battle tactics with the other squad commanders, Al just went with it, trudged on, endured, always waiting for the end of the day where he could just let go and drink himself into oblivion.

Steve, knowing Al the longest of all the Honey Badgers, knew that Al had problems, and always tried his best to motivate him. Whether it was getting him to spend time with the rest of the squad or just simply waking him up early so he could enjoy the sunlit hours of the day, Steve had done more than his fair share to help his commander out of the alcoholic stupor that the Legend had been immersing himself in for half a decade. He believed it was working…that he was finally getting through to Al as well.

And in truth, he really was. More than ever, Al was getting up earlier, sometimes even early enough to catch breakfast with the rest of the squad. Steve knew Al enjoyed spending time with the rest of the Honey Badgers, though he was silent on the matter. Still, the most important improvement of all was that Al was finally drinking less. Yes, he did still drink, but not quite as heavily as he used to. Now, at least, Al could remember what had happened the night before.

"You ready, Al?" Steve asked his friend as he helped him up. "Everyone's probably at breakfast by now. Heard they're serving bacon and eggs today. Finally, something decent. Arceus knows, we're probably gonna need it today."

"Sounds good to me, kid," the Legend replied, and smiled as he threw on his trench coat.

The two walked down to the cafeteria together, side-by-side, as equals.

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, cafeteria, 8:30 a.m.**

"…and I was still working in the sublevels when Sonichu and Rosechu breached our defenses," explained Nate Shaw between spoonfuls of cereal. "Jason assigned my team to put together plans for shipping you the weapons and stuff. I think Beel was able to keep them occupied long enough for the upper levels to evacuate…we still lost a few IT personnel, though. That, and Jason got face-raped into a coma." He took a gulp of orange juice and smiled at his younger brother. "Let's just say us 4-cent guys are looking forward to sending Rosechu our regards."

"Likewise," replied Kevin, absentmindedly stabbing his eggs with a fork. "I had no idea she could do that Incredible Lioness shit. It's like she just changed personalities all of a sudden…like Chandler told her she had to become a crazy feminazi or something. I mean, I _met_ her back in 1998. I know what she was like. Definitely _not_ a face-raping nudist."

"Two words that should _never_ be put together," added Jexis as she arrived with Serge and Amanda in tow. "Good news on the science front. Looks like the Asperpedia lab finally put together a decent report addressing those miniature chu larvae you found in the jungle."

Kevin moved over a few inches, allowing the young medic to sit beside him. "So what are they?"

"I checked the full report." Jexis placed a sheaf of papers on the table and helped herself to some of Serge's toast. "Here's the Cliffs Notes version, though. What we're looking at is a whole new strain of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon known as "birther-class" Rosechus. They don't lay eggs – that's why there weren't any shells around the nest. What happens instead is even worse…they give birth to _live young_. Up to a dozen mini-Sonees and Roseys in each litter."

Serge winced. "Serge still remembers tiny baby shock-pigs. You killed Serge's hunger."

"Works for me." Jexis reached over and pulled the tray across the table. "Thanks, Big Bear. Anyway, the birther-class Rosechu's gestation period is about the same as a mouse's – 19 to 21 days. That means a potential two dozen larvae in just a little less than a month and a half. The babies are sterile, and they can't evolve due to genetic deficiencies. This wasn't a natural evolution – the loyalists _made_ these things."

"Why?" asked Amanda incredulously. "They got their whole army of regular sized babies, the Sparkies, the mercs, the Combo…the hell do they need a bunch of little piranha-chus for?"

"My guess? It was all a big mistake…or aliens," Steve answered as he and Al – both of whom were carrying full breakfast trays - took their seats next to Zoey. "In any case, those scars on my arm finally healed up, by the way. Morning, everyone."

"Morning," replied Kevin, Nate, Zoey, Jexis, Amanda, and Serge.

"Just had to drag our fearless leader out of bed," continued the blond Jerkop, and speared a piece of bacon on the tip of his kukri. "We're leaving SUZI and Sugar here, by the way. Sorry, but this isn't exactly the type of mission that a LIESA unit and a honey badger are suited for. And while we're on the subject of missions…Nate, you absolutely sure that you're ready for this?"

Nate grinned. "As ever. Hope Nick's okay with a little competition."

"Ask him yourself. He's been up since 6:00 practicing at the range," suggested Amanda.

It hadn't taken Al very long to convince Mary Lee Walsh and Marcus Bagget to grant Nate Shaw the honors of becoming a Jerkop. The fact that he was Kevin's brother sealed the deal, and now the Honey Badgers had been blessed with a second sharpshooter. It was a miracle, really, that they'd let Nate keep the Barrett he'd acquired back at the crash site. But then again, everyone was looking at the squad with a little more admiration since they and Los Chupacabras had braved an all-out loyalist assault in order to secure the immense weapon stash airlifted to them by their allies at 4-cent_garbage.

"So they're really deploying _everything_," mused Zoey, twirling a strand of hair around her finger. "Crackders, Punislavs, _and_ S.A.V.s?

Nate nodded. "You'll have plenty of automated support. Take my word for it – Dr. Robotnik's tech is the absolute best on the market…or anywhere, for that matter."

"How much of it was actually field-tested, though?" asked Al, glancing at the former 4-cent employee out of the corner of his eye. "The briefing said the Punislavs are gonna be used for transporting Jerkops – what happens if one of them glitches out and starts transforming with passengers inside? Or…Arceus forbid…what if a Crackder misfires and takes out the wrong targets? I'm just saying, I'm not so sure about this. If a single hedgehog can take down your boss's best weapons again and again, what's the point of sending all this stuff into combat against an army of hedgehogs?"

"You forgot that that was _Sonic the Hedgehog_, sir," Nate replied coldly. "And those days are over…for now. Dr. Robotnik's agenda is focused on the resistance efforts here. You've obviously seen what the LIESAs can do against Sonees and Roseys…"

"No, he's right, Nate," Kevin interjected. "Hunting and killing larvae via robot is one thing. Fighting Sparkies out in a war zone full of friendlies and civvies…that's a whole different story."

Nate sighed. "Look, I don't know how else to convince you guys. Just trust me – I worked with the doctor on designing these things. They're not foolproof – nothing is – but they've been programmed with variations of Asimov's three laws."

"Wasn't the first law something like 'a robot can never harm a human being'?" asked Jexis.

"They won't harm _humans_ unless directed to," explained the mechanic. "Adult chus and larvae are fair game. And if they run into any loyalist mercs, there's an operating station in Wilderness that can remotely command them if need be. Just relax, and don't worry. There's not really that much that can go wrong with them."

"That's what they all say," chuckled Steve. "Next thing you know, everything goes _Terminator_."

"Ha _ha_." Nate sipped his orange juice and turned back to Kevin, rolling his eyes. "I got an email from Mom and Dad last night."

"Oh?" Kevin perked up instantly. Since returning from the crash site and reuniting with his brother, he'd been in regular contact with his parents through Nate's email and Skype accounts. Needless to say, both Jack and Irene Shaw had been overjoyed to learn that their son was still alive, though needless to say, both were confused as to why Kevin hadn't aged much in a full decade. Because problems of a temporal nature were hard enough to explain, Nate and Kevin had quickly changed the subject. Lucy was doing fine, too – she was off at college studying for a degree in physics. But no matter how many times Jack and Irene had suggested that they come visit CWCville, both of the Shaw brothers always shot down their requests with tales of the chu occupation and the atrocities that followed.

"I told them about the June Offensive," admitted Nate. "Mom didn't want us to fight, but I told her we had to. For the city." He smiled weakly. "Dad made me promise to look after you and make sure you don't get hurt or killed."

Kevin chuckled. "I think it's actually gonna be the other way around for once."

"That's what I said. They still can't believe that you've killed…I don't know how many it was, I just put down a guesstimate. 250 Sonees and Roseys, a dozen adult chus, and five mercs."

"More or less." Kevin took a bite of bacon and chewed thoughtfully. "Mmhgffmh…I mean, were they impressed?"

"More or less. Dad said he wants a picture of each of us with a Sonichu we killed."

"The way they keep hyping this battle up, we're probably going to get plenty of chances to do that," replied Kevin. "And while we're on this topic…does America even know what's going on here? I mean, someone must've told them about…"

"I have no fucking idea." Nate shrugged. "For all I know, the country just gave up on this place. Look what happened with Katrina. The government couldn't even clean up a damn hurricane the right way. Guess they're all too busy worrying about the elections or some shit to care about us."

"Katrina?"

"Never mind. God, that time travel Warp thing still blows my mind. You lucky bastard."

"We were just lucky to _survive_ that," Zoey interjected.

The squad ate in silence as their various conversations died down. Kuri arrived a few minutes later, having overslept after accepting a challenge from Nick the night before to drink a tequila shot with a single drop of BYD sauce mixed in. Matt and Allie were still nowhere to be found, and Nick was still sniping targets at the practice range. As the minutes ticked by, the mood of the Honey Badgers gradually grew less cheerful and more subdued, most likely due to the inevitable battle edging its way closer and closer to all of them.

Kevin finished his bacon and eggs in silence, allowing the cafeteria's ambient chatter to distract him from the cold tension stewing in his stomach. There wasn't much he could do to help it, and he had a feeling that most of the other Jerkops in Menchi-Nasu and the rest of CWCville's PVCC HQs were experiencing the same sensation as he was. The closest thing Kevin could associate with it was the feeling of riding a roller coaster during those terrifying few seconds when the cars ascended higher and higher into the sky, drawing closer and closer to the point of no return. There was no way out, no way to go back and stop the ride and get off.

The only thing he could do was to brace himself for the fall, and hope to survive.

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, administrator meeting room, 8:45 a.m.**

"What I want to know," Mary Lee Walsh stated firmly to the gathered Miscreants and the PVCC administrators broadcasting remotely from across CWCville, "is how Slumberland security allowed a single intruder to slip past their defenses and infiltrate the HQ. Giovanni, I want an explanation. Why didn't your Jerkop squads apprehend him?"

"_He was unarmed, Mary,"_ replied the Team Rocket commander from his conference screen on the wall. _"Seeing as how he left those prototypes and the blueprints with us, his intentions can't have been that hostile. And if this gun can cure my Nait…"_

"Only time will tell if the weapon will actually work the way he said it would," continued Walsh. "But that's not the point. The point is, if he managed to breach Slumberland, it means a loyalist spy could breach it as well. We're not ready to play the espionage game…not on the home front, at least."

"Speaking of which, have the agents been briefed on this extraction assignment?" asked Vivian Gee as she entered the room from the command and control center. "I've been in contact with the retrieval unit…looks like some of yours, Giovanni."

"_Yes. I believe the Pickled Ducks are more suitable for this kind of work than a larger squad."_

"Agreed." Walsh tapped a few commands onto the keyboard in front of her, pulling up what looked like a satellite image of CWCville's west side. "And speaking of the Ducks, it seems our grey-skinned friend unintentionally left another present for us. We've guided the NHFHSC surveillance drone over the western part of the city to provide targeting coordinates for the Crackder airstrikes, but we can also use it to direct our Transformers and Jerkop squads on the ground." She grabbed a laser pointer and marked a building in the upper left corner. "That's Agent McKenzie's apartment – the rendezvous point. Giovanni, you send the Ducks here once BILLY extracts Agent O'Neil. They'll be passing through the middle of the war zone…I can give them Jerkop support, but not much. I've got enough on my plate as is."

"_Understood," _said Giovanni. _"What's Ivo's role in all this?"_

"You two and Naitsirhc…uh…_Reldnahc_ are going after Rosechu," explained the PVCC supreme commander. "Take an SAV and see if you can get her away from her 'sweetbolt'. That should buy us enough time for Wes and I to coordinate the assault on the Shopping Center."

"I'm going too," added Liquid Chris, and stepped forward, holding Kacey's hand. "I can draw Sonichu off of you three using Robotnik's decoy cloak. Knowing his ego, he'll _have_ to go after me."

"Be careful, honey," Kacey warned him. "Don't get killed out there, okay?"

"I'll be fine," Chris assured his sweetheart. "You take care of yourself…and _hold the line_."

"Right. Anyway, that's about it for the preliminaries," continued Walsh. "I'll see what Graduon and I can do from the air. Silvana's been assigned to take out Magi-Chan – that is, if she doesn't embarrass herself again like she did at Spring Break."

The administrators muttered in agreement. Silvana Rosechu's defeat was one thing, but a defeat at the hands of _Bubbles Rosechu_ was a humiliation on a completely different scale. Whatever credibility Graduon's protégé had earned for delivering the Honey Badgers back from the Warp had been all but erased in the aftermath of the failed Blake/Bubbles assassination attempt. It was a wonder Silvana had even decided to stay with the PVCC after that, but she was still a valuable auxiliary nonetheless.

Simonchu, having proved himself a worthy combatant during the loyalist attack on the crashed 4-cent_garbage supply plane, was also being deployed to the frontlines of the June Offensive. If Wild Sonichu and Simonla Rosechu were called upon to defend the city against the PVCC incursion, the Jerkops would need all the help they could get. And seeing as how Simonchu was the only result of Project Asperchu who had been cleared for active duty, he, Silvana, Reldnahc, and Wes Iseli had formed the quartet of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon (only the first two of whom were pureblood _Navitaricii_) assigned to assist the rebels during the attack on CWCville.

"Jason," the blond woman addressed her robed colleague from 4-cent_garbage. "Your reserves are stationed outside the east wall, correct?"

"_Correct,"_ replied Jason Kendrick Howell. _"We have three dozen auxiliary squads from Tennessee awaiting Silvana's clearance. Mary, are you sure we can trust her?"_

"We have no choice," Walsh muttered. "Clyde, how does it look from where your troops are?"

"_Pretty fucking hot out here, Mary,"_ Clyde Cash coughed, his voice obscured by the air filter of a stolen mercenary combat mask. _"Don't worry, we'll manage. We've got more than enough firepower to take out the wall. They'll be too occupied with your Jerkops to notice us coming in from behind."_

"Not if Magi-Chan detects you," cautioned Mary Lee Walsh. "Stay low and…try not to think too much. Expect heavy resistance near the wall once you get clear of the treeline. We'll give you air support if need be to take out the gun towers." She glanced around the room. "And someone tell me where the _hell_ Max scurried off to!"

"Ah, leave the little cuz alone," Surfshack Tito chuckled. "Like the ancient Hawaiians say, he who grows coconuts…uh, in the volcanoes…um…well, in any case, we don't need his assistance just yet."

"_I'm getting sick and bloody tired of that little bugger,"_ muttered Jimmy Hill under his breath.

"_Okay, I'm out. See you on the frontlines, guys,"_ finished Clyde Cash, and clicked off his transmission. One by one, the other screens went dark, until only Mary Lee Walsh, Vivian Gee, Liquid Chris, Kacey, and Surfshack Tito remained in the meeting room.

"So what now?" asked Vivian, adjusting her glasses anxiously.

Walsh smiled. "Now…we kill them all. Every single one of them. Rise, resist, revolution."

"Rise, resist, revolution," chanted the Miscreants in unison. At long last, they had reached the third and final stage. For years they had waited, gathering their troops, sabotaging Chandler's attempts to control his dying city, and preparing for the final uprising and the destruction of the chu occupation. Now, the final battle for CWCville would begin in a matter of hours.

The board was set, and all that was left was for Walsh to sound the charge.

_Henry was right,_ the former dean thought to herself as she turned to watch the UAV surveillance footage. _In the end, every damn thing comes down to liberty or death._

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, garage, 9:04 a.m.**

"Matt?" called Kevin as he made his way through the bustling crowd of technicians, Jerkops, and other PVCC personnel assigned to oversee the deployment of Menchi-Nasu's vehicle fleet. Around him, sparks flew and engines roared while the mechanics labored away at armored trucks, vans, and even a dump truck that the Spikes of Blue had managed to commandeer. Kevin's attention was not drawn to their activity, but was focused instead on the familiar yellow school bus parked on the opposite side of the garage. He had a feeling his friend would be there.

The wisps of smoke billowing through the vehicle's windows quickly confirmed his suspicions.

"…waiting for the sunset to come, people going home," slurred Matt's voice from inside. Kevin opened the Battle Bus's front door and climbed up to join him. "Jump out from behind 'em, and shoot them in the head…now everybody dancing the dance of the dead…"

"Okay, did you get _any_ sleep last night?" Kevin asked, rolling his eyes as he sat down in the seat opposite his squadmate's. Matt and the Squirtle appeared to have somehow acquired an entire briefcase of marijuana, and they looked like they'd already worked their way through a third of it. It was a marvel the Jerkop could even string a sentence together, much less "Fire Coming Out of the Monkey's Head". Then again, Matt had a superhuman tolerance for the effects of weed…to a certain extent. Kevin hadn't forgotten the Rosey. _No one_ had forgotten the Rosey.

"Squirtle squiiiiiiirrrrrrrtle squirtle squirt," the Squirtle yawned, and held out a joint. Its eyes were completely red, but the lopsided smile on its face was more than welcoming.

"Whennnnnnn do we have to…the meeting's…maybe?" Matt mumbled through a THC haze.

"Hour and a half." Kevin shrugged, took the joint, and popped it into his mouth. "Thanks, dude."

"Squirtle."

Kevin leaned his head back and let the first high of his life wash over him. For a few brief seconds, the drab rubber interior of the Battle Bus blurred into an incomprehensible mix of colors, and promptly switched into a visual explosion of sights and sounds that nearly blew the Jerkop's mind then and there. The thoughts of apprehension quickly faded away with each breath, leaving nothing but a gentle floating sensation behind. _So this is what it's like._

"Hey Kevin?" Matt asked suddenly, fifteen or sixteen minutes into Kevin's high. His voice sounded clearer. "You think…we're all gonna die today?"

Kevin coughed. "I dunno…" He reached over and took a deep pull from the Squirtle's bong. "Maybe. We coulda died a buncha times…it's not the reason we…you're a pwetty Wosey…"

"Don't…say that," shuddered the Jerkop as he tried to grab an invisible chu larva on the ceiling. "Too many damn babies already…don't need more _oh God they're coming out of the walls_…"

"We're not gonna die," Kevin slurred, while Matt fought to push back the invisible tide of Sonee and Rosey hallucinations. "…cause you and me, we're gonna rain down the hellfire on those little fuckballs…hey, can I have, like, a sandwich or some pineapple or…"

"Get it yourself." Matt gave up and slumped forward, kneading his forehead. "But I think we all gotta…have fun while we can, right? Light up while you got it, right? And…so what about you and Allie… You gonna go get laid…before we ship out STOP HUGGING MY FACE!"

"That's it, I'm out of here," sighed Kevin, and stumbled his way toward the Battle Bus's front door. Matt had a point. Maybe if he managed to find Allie in all this chaos, she'd…

_CRASH!_ Kevin's love quest was put to an immediate halt when he abruptly lost his balance and passed out on top of a crate full of scrap metal. It was a miracle he managed to avoid giving himself a concussion on the way down to the floor.

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, Honey Badger barracks, 11:53 a.m.**

"Wake up. WAKE UP!"

_SMACK!_

"OW! WHAT THE FUCK?!" yelled Kevin as he sat bolt upright, nearly headbutting Jexis in the process. The medic had been kneeling beside him on the floor, and judging by the stinging pain in his cheek, she had just delivered him a rather effective wake-up call. "Oh. Sorry, Cadet."

"You feeling okay? How's your head?" Jexis pried open his left eye and shone a flashlight into it, temporarily blinding him. "Listen, everyone's in the garage waiting to deploy – you guys missed the briefing. They left me here to make sure you and Matt didn't…I don't know, die or something. I'm not gonna lie…Zoey was kinda pissed."

"Briefing…FUCK!" Kevin immediately clutched his head as the THC withdrawal kicked in with a vengeance. Looking around, he noticed that he was back in the squad barracks, next to Matt. The other Jerkop was still snoring peacefully, with a few crumbs of what looked like a pot brownie surrounding his mouth. "Figures. Of course we'd miss that. Fuck me."

"Honestly, I wouldn't worry too much about it. That's Steve and Al's problem." Jexis giggled. "Oh man…you should see your eyes right about now."

"Shut up," groaned Kevin, and slowly rose to his feet. "Is everyone waiting at the Battle Bus?"

The medic patted the MP5 strapped to her back. "Yep. Just waiting for the word from Walsh. This is it, right? You ready to go out and end this little war for good?"

"Hang on a sec." Kevin dashed into the sleeping quarters and slammed the door shut. Pulling his weed-covered shirt over his head, he flung it into the laundry basket and began rummaging around beneath his cot for a clean one. The rest of his gear was over in the locker room…if he hurried, he might be able to get suited up and join the rest of the squad in the garage before the attack even started…

_BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!_ The thunderous roar of explosions sounded in the distance as the final assault on CWCville began with a literal bang. Rushing to the window, Kevin stared out across the city just as a massive wing of two dozen Crackder drones shrieked overhead on their way toward another bombing run. Further away through a curtain of smoke, he could see angry flames spiraling into the sky and pieces of rubble raining down from above. The airstrikes were taking out targets in the Lightning and Zappin' districts, in a shock and awe tactic to cripple and disorient the chu population before the Jerkop ground teams were sent in to mop up the survivors and draw out the Chaotic Combo.

Grinning in anticipation, Kevin selected a clean grey t-shirt with a PVCC logo and pulled it on. He stole another glance at the growing chaos outside. Now the first wave of trucks was leaving Menchi-Nasu, carrying dozens upon dozens of battle-hardened Jerkops into the fray of what was to be the last great attempt to end the chu occupation once and for all. As the last of the vehicles vanished out of the main gate, he breathed a sigh of relief when he noticed the Battle Bus was not among them. He still had time. He and Matt still had enough time to…

"Hey."

Kevin froze in shock, and slowly glanced over his shoulder. Allie stood behind him, outfitted in full combat gear and her welder's mask. Trogdor was absent, most likely already loaded on the Battle Bus with the rest of the squad's weapons. Cradled in her arms was a large bundle of leather and cloth – Kevin's coat, shoulder strap, ammo belt, and holster.

"I brought your gear," she announced, smiling at him. "Guess Matt's still stoned out, right?"

"Right," replied Kevin, and turned to face her. Behind them, through the window, a building vanished in a cloud of smoke and a distant fireball. "Thanks. Looks like…looks like we made it all the way to Judgment Day. I can't believe it…we're finally here."

"Not _yet_," said Allie, and placed the bundle on his cot. "You want some help with that?"

"Nah, I'm good." The Jerkop pulled on his coat and grinned back at his squadmate. Grabbing the holster and knife sheath, he attached them to his belt, then wound the ammo belt and shoulder strap crosswise over the coat, just the way he'd always done before every one of the Honey Badgers' adventures into the war zone that was CWCville. This time, though, there was a new and ominous sensation in his heart…a feeling of hope, and finality. Soon it would all be over. Soon the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon species would be no more, and all of Chandler's hideous creations slaughtered and forgotten forever. The PVCC had been preparing for this final battle since the inception of the resistance, and now, at long last, they had the opportunity to strike at the heart of the loyalists, and end the conflict to restore order.

"You're feeling it too, right?" Allie asked. Kevin felt her hand slide into his. "It's all coming down today. We're gonna be free…"

Kevin squeezed her hand nervously. "No more Sonichus. No more Rosechus. No more larvae. No more Combo. No more Chandler. That's something worth fighting for."

"Something worth dying for, though?" Allie looked up at him. Even with the horrific burn tainting her face, her eyes still held that same blazing gleam as always. "Last night at the party…Al was drunk, but he was right. We might not get out of this alive. Understand?"

It took a few seconds for the realization of what she meant to work its way through Kevin's overhanging cloud of euphoria. "Yeah."

"Good." Allie hugged him tightly, pressing herself against Kevin in an embrace so violent that he thought it would have nearly crushed his ribcage if she'd been any stronger. "Thanks, Kevin. Thanks for _everything_."

Kevin could hardly even speak over the crushing band encircling his lungs. Of his own accord, he felt himself moving closer to Allie's beautiful burned face, drawing nearer and nearer until…

_SLAM!_

"What the _fuck_ is taking so long?" Matt asked as he threw the door open and stumbled in, his eyes bleary and bloodshot. "I…uh…goddamn it, don't tell me you took me _seriously_-"

Kevin whirled around and immediately presented his friend with the absolute most withering stare he'd ever given anyone. It must have worked, because Matt's face immediately shifted from surprise to something resembling pure terror. Without a word, the Jerkop closed the door.

"Well…that escalated quickly," commented Allie, and let out an awkward laugh. "Maybe we just ought to-_mmph!_" Her words were sharply cut off as Kevin pulled her in and kissed her fiercely on the lips, acting on instinct before his mind could take over and ruin everything. It would have made for a perfect scene in a film or a play – the two of them locked together in front of the window while bombs rained across CWCville, the explosions throwing columns of fire and smoke so high up into the summer sky that they would soon block out the sun. The moment didn't last more than ten seconds, but for the Jerkops, it was _more_ than enough time.

"Right," chuckled Kevin when they finally broke apart. "Glad we got that out of the way." He grabbed George's hunting knife from the table beside his cot and slid it into the sheath on his belt. "Time to go."

"Hell fucking _yes_," Allie replied, her voice bursting with newfound determination.

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, garage, 12:05 p.m.**

The first assault wave was already underway, but the second and third group of PVCC attack vehicles still hadn't left Menchi-Nasu. PA announcements echoed through the garage as dozens of Jerkop squads rushed to and fro, loading ammunition and supplies into their trucks for the battle to come. Every so often, the roar of a Crackder's jet engine would split the sky, heralding the successful delivery of another explosive payload. Though they were out in the middle of what had to have been the most chaotic firefight of their lives, the Jerkops Walsh had chosen to participate in the first strike were hardly in any danger at all. With indomitable air support backing them up, their trickiest job at the moment was fending off any Sonichus and EHPF who had managed to figure out what was going on and attempted to retaliate.

And Steve Morrison couldn't wait to join them.

Leaning against the side of the Battle Bus, the Jerkop squad leader cut a much more imposing figure than usual, which might have had something to do with the white side-filter gas mask with red-tinted visor lenses he'd chosen to wear as part of his combat uniform for the final assault. The XM8 on his back and his new revolver – the matte-black death machine he'd recovered from the crash site - might have helped, too. Beside him, Al's loadout was no less impressive – a brown leather trench coat and reinforced shoulder guards over full Kevlar and grey cargo pants. True to his nature, the Legend had chosen both his beloved M1911 and the Desert Eagle as sidearms, along with his weapon of the day – an M4 carbine with a red dot sight and an underslung Masterkey shotgun attachment, courtesy of the immense weapons stash the Honey Badgers had helped recover. "Straight out of _Call of Duty_" was how Matt had described the monstrosity of an assault rifle.

"Look, I know we're not going in until the second wave," Zoey sighed as she stepped out of the bus to join Al, Steve, and Kuri – the only Honey Badgers who weren't already waiting inside, "but this is ridiculous. How much weed did those two smoke? And where the hell is Allie?"

"Jexis must've called her in or something," suggested Steve. "As long as we're not doing anything, want to give Kuri that little…you know?" He winked at Al.

Kuri blinked. "Wait, what? What's going on where?"

"Sure, why not?" The Legend stepped over to a nearby table and retrieved a large cardboard box messily tied up with string and duct tape. "Nick and I took the liberty of making you a little present. You might want to think about putting it to good use today."

"Aww, you didn't have to-" The Jerkop's jaw dropped as she tore open the package and lifted a new tekko-kagi out for all to see. It was a magnificent weapon – forged from high-carbon steel and bearing an inner layer of blue padding to protect the user's hand. A definite upgrade from the scrap-forged model she'd been using since her feral days in the abandoned zone. Furthermore, the claws seemed a bit different. They were larger, and appeared to have what looked like tiny channels cut into the steel just behind the pointy tips.

Steve smiled. "Told you she'd like it."

"_Like_ it?" Kuri echoed incredulously, nearly squealing with delight as she examined the beautifully-crafted claws. "I _love _it! Thank you! Thank you thank you thank you SO MUCH!"

"Really now?" asked Al with a sinister grin. "It gets better. Watch this."

Kuri could only stare in awe as the squad commander took the tekko-kagi from her and flipped it over, then uncorked his canteen and poured a quarter cup of liquid into a cylindrical reservoir above the cushioned grip. Sealing the tank shut with a plastic cap, Al placed his hand inside the weapon, aimed it at Kuri's face, and squeezed the cylinder, hard.

_SSSSSST!_

"AAAAHHH!" yelled the Jerkop, shielding her eyes and leaping back as four jets of Smirnoff sprayed her straight in the face. They had come from the claws themselves.

"It's like a squirt gun, but…sharper," Steve explained. "The grip's linked to a tiny air pump we salvaged from a Super Soaker. You fill the tank with poison or lighter fluid or whatever and…"

"…and BAM! Injection," finished Al as he poured the remaining vodka into his canteen and handed the upgraded tekko-kagi back to Kuri. "We called it the TK 2.0. It's yours now - feel free to rename it." He glared at Steve. "Everyone seems to be naming their weapons these days."

"Hey, Allie started it with Trogdor," the squad leader retorted, and patted the black revolver holstered on his belt. "What on earth's wrong with Origin?"

"Nothing. I'm more confused as to why you…" Al's voice trailed off as he looked up and noticed Jexis, Kevin, Allie, and Matt making their way across the garage to join the squad. "Well well. Look who finally decided to help us take down the city. Holy _Arceus_, your eyes are red."

"Heh…sorry," replied Matt sheepishly. "Did anyone see what happened to the Squirtle?"

Steve shook his head. "I already checked the bus. Smells like weed, brownies, and turtle. I'm just impressed that you two managed to wake up again. Which reminds me…you guys weren't fooling around with my iPod, were you? I can't find it."

Matt reached into his pocket and retrieved the device. "Yeah. Thanks for letting me borrow it."

"I never _let_ you borrow it," growled the squad leader as he grabbed the iPod. "Right. You four get inside – we'll brief everyone one last time before we deploy. No more fooling around."

"I want everyone on top of their game today," Zoey added, her face grim as she looked to each Jerkop in turn. "We pull this off, and it's all over for the recolors. We fuck up, and it's all over for us. It all comes down to who's left - us or them. Got it?"

Kevin and Matt nodded, then filed onto the Battle Bus after Jexis, Kuri, and Allie.

"That was a nice way of putting it, Zo," commented Steve. "You've got a point – they need to be taking this operation a lot more seriously." His smile faded. "Maybe…maybe it's for the best."

Neither Al or Zoey replied. Both of them knew exactly what Steve meant. For a while, they just stood there in silence, listening to the rumbling of truck engines around them and the distant booming of Crackder attack runs and explosions across the city. It was foolish to believe the Honey Badgers would survive the June Offensive without losing any members of their squad.

Finally, mercifully, the call to action came in.

"_Honey Badger Command, Menchi-Nasu Control,"_ an operator's voice sounded from Al's walkie-talkie. The man sounded absolutely flustered, with good reason. The command and control room at Menchi-Nasu must have been absolute chaos by now. _"The name's Joseph Herring, but you can call me Joe – I've been assigned to your squad as an operator for this offensive. Are your Jerkops prepared to deploy, Manajerk Ledger? Over."_

"Copy and confirm that, Joe," replied Al as he flipped down his welder's mask and activated its built-in transmitter to let him communicate with the operator and fight at the same time. "And just call me Al. No one calls me 'Manajerk Ledger' except Bagget himself. Over."

"_Okay, Al. I'm trying to get your vehicle locked into our surveillance network – you'll have to forgive me, we only have one UAV and it's gonna take a while to get your squad on the grid…"_

"Don't worry about that," Al interrupted. "Just tell us where we're going. Over."

Steve nudged Zoey. "We have a UAV? When did that happen?"

"_Right. Hang on."_ A series of keyboard taps crackled out of the speaker as Joe brought up Mary Lee Walsh's plan of assault. _"You're being sent to help take the freeway and get any civilians you can to safety – airstrikes just leveled the Mal-Wart and Get-Tar districts and the EHPF's launching their counterattack along the CWCville Central Highway. You only have to hold it until we send in the Red Devils to relieve you – from there, move north through Get-Tar and meet up with the White Medallions and Silvana. You're going to bait Magi-Chan, over."_

"Understood." Al clenched his fist, popping his knuckles audibly. "Anything else? Over."

"_Just…please don't get killed,"_ Joe answered shakily. _"We're getting reports from ChinaTown control…looks like we stirred up Punchy and Layla. Multiple casualties and captures…I think we're in for one hell of an upward struggle today. Good luck, guys. Stay in touch. Out."_

"Joseph Herring…" Steve mused, thumbing the handle of his kukri. "That's a familiar name…I think he was a student here, back when this place was called Manchester. Chandler's friend."

"And we all know how long friendships with Chandler usually last," added Zoey as she stepped into the Battle Bus. "Come on, then. Let's go take back our city."

"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more," murmured Al, and took a long drink from his canteen, emptying a full half of it. He had a feeling he'd need to save the rest for later. At the moment, though, he needed to keep himself as alert and awake as possible for the battle to come.

The Honey Badgers were going to war.

* * *

**West CWCville, Lower West district, apartment block Luckette, 12:09 p.m.**

While the bombs fell around her and Crackder drones shrieked past her penthouse's massive picture window, Ivy O'Neil casually lay on her sofa, sipping at a makeshift cocktail she'd managed to assemble from her emergency liquor stash and some leftover orange juice. There was plenty of CWC Orange Soda in the minibar…but frankly, she wasn't in the mood for tainting her precious Absolut with any of his copyright-infringing soft drinks. It was bad enough that Chandler had drawn her enjoying a glass of Orange Soda with him in his abominable honeymoon fantasy. Then again, his choice of beverage was the least of that comic's problems.

_Stay in the Time Void all you want, little Chris,_ she thought to herself, and grinned wickedly. _You're never getting any of THIS china. Oh, I can't wait until you come back and see what my friends and I did to your precious little city and all your precious little recolors…_

_BANG! BANG! BANG!_

"Miss O'Neil! Are ya in there?" a Sonichu guard's nasally voice addressed her from the other side of the penthouse door. "We're here to zap to the extreme and get you to safety!"

_Not fucking likely._ The PVCC agent gulped down the rest of her drink and rose to her feet. She wasn't the least bit concerned about the airstrikes – Mary Lee Walsh had made it quite clear that Luckette had been designated as a "no-bomb" zone, since Ivy's intel on Chris was too important for Walsh to risk killing her by friendly fire. Her security was too tight for her to call Menchi-Nasu from her apartment, but if the extraction went as planned, the administrators would have a collection of vital information in their hands by the end of the day. Even if Agent McKenzie's cover was blown, Ivy still had enough dirt on Chandler to ensure complete victory for the rebels.

Now it was all up to BILLY MAYS.

"Miss O'Neil!" shouted the guard again, pounding on the door. "Open this door or we'll…"

"All right, I'm coming!" Ivy grabbed the duffel bag full of intel and checked to make sure she still had her Beretta. The city was at war, after all, and things were undeniably going to get ugly.

The Luckette's windowed penthouse elevator slowly descended floor by floor, revealing the chaos unfolding in the city outside. Ivy promptly broke down in a fit of fake sobs, playing up her persona as Chandler's sweetheart to the max as she watched the bombs rain down on CWCville. Had the four EHPF guards not been flanking her at the moment, she would have been jumping for joy. The recolors were getting a taste of the city's fury at last. Revenge was sweet indeed.

"Wh-where are we going?" she gasped, pretending to wipe away a stream of tears.

"Those…those_ monsters_ are attacking our city!" replied the lead Sonichu, his voice filled with overdramatic outrage. "We've got to get you out of here so you can be our creator's heartsweet when he returns!" He flashed her a smug, overconfident smile. "Don't worry, _I'll_ protect you!"

"We're not going out there, are we?" Ivy put on her most convincing "damsel in distress" expression and looked up at the chu, silently hoping he was smart enough to recognize a death trap. Most of the mercenaries were competent soldiers, but the EHPF, to say the least…were not.

"There's nothing to worry about," explained the officer, shifting uncomfortably as a Crackder swooped around the apartment and fired off a blast of energy that exploded an EHPF truck in the streets below. "We'll just go through the subway tunnels! There aren't any dirty Jerkops down there! But we've got to get all of the helpless little babies out of here! The jerks are giving them too much stress, and they need big strong Sonichus like us to protect them and their mommies!

Ivy giggled, stifling the disgust building in her guts. "Sonichu brought little Robbie to the last meeting and showed him off to everyone! The little guy says he's getting faster every day!"

A collective "awww" swept the elevator as the EHPF officers sighed in ridiculous admiration. Ivy's praise was a complete and utter lie – Robbie Sonee was still about as fast as he'd been a year ago and would _never _improve, no matter how many times he and his father repeated the same tired old lines about how the little Sonee was going to be as strong and fast as his daddy, and would be the next leader of the Chaotic Combo when he evolved.

_CRASH!_ The elevator lurched suddenly and halted, shaken by what sounded like an explosion from below. Ivy covered her mouth with her hands as if in shock, masking her enormous grin.

_Late as usual, BILLY._

"What the heavy metal rock band?" exclaimed the lead officer as he fruitlessly pounded on the door with a gloved fist. "Why'd it stop? Why'd it stop? It's not supposed to be this hard!"

As the chus clustered around the sealed elevator doors and began trying unsuccessfully to push them open, a transport-class Crackder leveled off just above them, hovering in midair as a pair of rappel lines unrolled out of from the troop bay. In the confusion, Ivy quickly slipped a pair of earplugs in and readied herself for the extraction. This was going to be loud.

Two Jerkops, both armed with MP5s, slid down the lines and opened fire just as Ivy hit the floor, shattering the curved glass of the elevator window and exposing its occupants to the howling, blazing wind outside. As a third line slid past the broken elevator, the two PVCC operatives swung away before the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon could shock them.

"IT'S NOT FAIR!" whined another Sonichu, his cheekspots sparking with built-up electricity. "WE WEREN'T READY FOR THIS!"

The third attacker dropped down from above, holding the line with one hand and a Benelli M4 shotgun with the other. The four chus could have shocked him any time they wanted, but for some absurd reason that had everything to do with their innate hero complexes, they maintained their ridiculous battle stances, waiting for this new villain to introduce himself and declare his intention to kidnap the lovely and helpless Ivy O'Neil and defeat her brave and heroic guardians.

Unfortunately, the newcomer in an OxiClean shirt fulfilled their expectations a little _too_ well.

"HI, BILLY MAYS HERE TO SEND YOUR ELECTRIC HEDGEHOG ASSES STRAIGHT TO HELL!" roared BILLY MAYS, and let loose with a thunderous double blast that shredded the lead Sonichu's torso into a bloody mess of exposed ribs and ruptured organs. Swinging to the right, he fired the semiautomatic shotgun again and blasted another Electric Hedgehog Pokemon right in the face, destroying the front of the chu's skull and annihilating its brain and eyes. SMG fire from the other two Jerkops quickly cut down the remaining EHPF officers in a matter of seconds, leaving a bloodstained and very shaken Ivy as the only survivor of the elevator.

"Hi, BILLY MAYS here!" MAYS repeated as the PVCC secret agent quickly leapt up and grabbed her duffel bag. "And I want to tell YOU all about our plan to get you out of here! It's _easy_! Just follow this one simple step…and JUMP FOR IT!"

Slinging the straps of her bag around her neck for safekeeping, Ivy leapt and grabbed hold of the rappel line. For an instant, she thought she wouldn't be able to hold on. Then BILLY's hand fastened around her arm like a vice, keeping her from slipping until she could find a secure hold on the rope. The Jerkops swung over to help. Ivy handed them the bag and let out a sigh of relief as she began climbing after BILLY, toward the Crackder hovering overhead.

The handoff was complete. All she needed to do now was survive the trip back to Menchi-Nasu.

* * *

**West CWCville, CWCville Central Highway, 12:16 p.m.**

"Holy _shit_," breathed Nate as the Battle Bus smashed through a closed security gate and into the ruins of what had once the massive Target superstore's parking lot. The airstrikes had all but leveled the main building, leaving only a cratered ruin and a heap of rubble in its wake. Judging by the pair of S.A.V. mechs providing overwatch outside and the distant muzzle flashes coming from within the wreckage, the PVCC's wrath was coming down hard on any Electric Hedgehog Pokémon who'd happened to be shopping there when the bombs started to fall.

"Watch the rubble," Steve ordered, leaning forward to study the elevated CWCville Central Highway that loomed before them like a colossal burning bridge of concrete and twisted steel. Up in the driver's seat, Matt nodded and wheeled the bus back and forth around the treacherous minefield of asphalt chunks. Everywhere the Jerkops looked, they were greeted with more scenes of destruction and chaos. The city itself seemed to be ablaze, belching columns of smoke and immense sheets of fire into the sky. What little sunlight remained now shone down from above in thin rays of light, but to the citizens of CWCville, it was as if night had fallen on their city.

Kevin sat motionless in his seat, clutching the barrel of his AK-47 with sweaty fingers as the bus lurched its way across the parking lot toward the besieged highway. The other Honey Badgers were just as lost for words as him. Too often they had walked these same streets and seen these same buildings while out on patrol, but now that the final battle had begun, almost nothing was recognizable anymore. Off in the distance to the west, muffled explosions and flashes of light heralded the beginning of another wave of airstrikes. With any luck, collateral damage to the human population would be minimal at worst.

"Talk to me, Joe," Al growled from the seat behind Kevin's. "Our ETA's about two minutes before boots on the ground. What's it look like up on the freeway? Over."

"_Okay, I finally got the high-altitude feed set up,"_ Joseph Herring stated through the Legend's walkie-talkie. _"You're gonna want to take the ramp opposite your approach – it's on the Mal-Wart side. You've got EHPF coming in from the west – there's a Crackder wing waiting to take out the highway, but you need to get any civilians out of there before I can call in the airstrike."_

"Understood. Patch me through to the squad commander on the freeway."

The radio clicked into silence as Joe switched frequencies. Within seconds, the bus was filled with the static-laced crackling of gunshots and explosions.

"_Honey Badger Command, Straw Dog Command!"_ a man's voice sounded from the receiver. _"Arceus, it's about time we got some fucking backup! Where the hell are you?"_

"Crossing out of the Target lot now," replied Al, and braced himself as Matt smashed the Battle bus right through the chain-link fence and back into the streets of CWCville. "I need a sit-rep, Straw Dog Command. How many Sparkers, how many mercs, and how many injured? Over."

"_Plenty of all three,"_ panted the squad commander. Kevin could hear what sounded like a minigun blazing away in the background. Looking up at the colossal highway, he could barely make out a colossal S.A.V. in mech form firing its shoulder-mounted autocannon to support the beleaguered Jerkops above. _"We've got a Transformer keeping 'em pinned for now. Lots of civilians trapped in the line of fire, over!"_

"Copy, Straw Dog Command, we're on our way. Out." Al looked up from the radio at Steve. "Looks like we've got our work cut out for us. Any ideas?"

"Yeah. Kill every single fucking loyalist out there," replied the squad leader bluntly, and rose to his feet, grabbing the handrail overhead as the bus swerved onto the curved ramp that led to the CWCville Central Highway. "Everyone up! Check your weapons! THIRTY SECONDS!"

Kevin stood up quickly and glanced back toward Allie. The memory of their kiss still lingered in his mind, even as the harsh rattles of gunfire from the frontline grew louder and louder around the Battle Bus. There were only a few seconds left…just a few more before…

The armored vehicle lurched over the last damaged stretch of ramp and onto the highway, revealing what had become of the immense road in the wake of the bombing campaign. Kevin could hardly believe his eyes as a river of immobile, frantically honking cars stretched out as far as the eye could see. Several dozen of the vehicles lay in ruins near the frontline, burning and riddled with bullet holes while their occupants – both human and chu - fled for safety. Further down the road, a barricade of wrecked cars had been assembled for the Jerkops by the helpful S.A.V. unit, which was now laying down suppressive fire on the loyalist defenders.

"End of the line, Honey Badgers!" yelled Steve, flipping his gas mask down as the armored bus thundered toward the battlefront. _"LET'S TAKE THIS FUCKING CITY! RISE! RESIST!"_

"REVOLUTION!" shouted the rest of the Honey Badgers in unison. With a screeching hiss, the Battle Bus ground to a halt beside half of a destroyed minivan, nearly colliding with the wall of cars. Matt wrenched the door control lever down and immediately ducked for cover in his seat as a burst of assault rifle fire thundered and ricocheted across the vehicle's armored windshield.

"EVERYONE OUT! GO! GO!" Al roared, pointing furiously to the open door. "Nick, get on the machine guns and TAKE OUT THOSE MERCS!"

_Arceus protect us,_ Kevin thought to himself as he followed Nate out of the bus and into the fray.

The sheer shock of entering the battlefield nearly knocked Kevin to his knees. A wave of pure, blistering heat washed over him as soon as he stepped off the Battle Bus, forcing him to shield his eyes with one hand while clutching his AK-47 with the other. And the smell…a heavy, odorous mix of burnt hair, blood, acrid smoke, and engine oil hung in the air above the freeway, filling the Jerkop's nostrils with the hot stench of battle every time he took a breath. Kevin had been wondering why Steve had brought his gas mask in the first place. Now it all made perfect sense. He wished he'd thought of that too.

Looking around, Kevin could see that the majority of his squadmates were suffering similar blows to their senses. Serge, on the other hand, merely coughed once and wrenched open the Battle Bus's underside storage locker to reveal Baba Yaga and Trogdor the Burninator. Before Allie and Serge could retrieve their weapons, an Indian man wearing red combat armor and carrying a SPAS-12 appeared from the wreckage, his face caked in ashes and a smear of blood.

"Thank fucking Arceus," coughed the Jerkop as Al and Steve stepped forward to greet him. "You guys have _no_ idea what kind of shit we've been fighting off up here. Dijer Turk, squad commander of the Straw Dogs."

"Al Ledger, Honey Badgers squad commander. This is my squad leader, Steve Morrison." Al gazed across the besieged highway through the visor of his welder's mask, taking in the scene of chaos and destruction around him. "What do you need us to do?"

"S.A.V.'s not gonna hold 'em off for long," replied the Manajerk, wincing as the Transformer's autocannon roared in the background. "We'll keep the Sparkies and mercs occupied while you clear off the bridge. Send any civilians you find back here – we'll get them out of the way."

"Sounds like a plan," Al nodded to Steve. "Send the Bus over to help 'em out. We got this."

"_We're clear!"_ the blond Jerkop yelled into his headset. Kevin could hardly hear Steve through the mask's air filter, but his own walkie-talkie was working fine. _"Get out of here, Matt! Go!"_

"_Copy that. Stay down!"_ The air exploded around the assembled Jerkops as the Battle Bus rolled across the stretch of asphalt behind them and opened up with the machine gun mounted on its left side. Looking up through teary smoke-filled eyes, Kevin could barely see Nick clutching the SAW while the weapon flashed and spat a stream of heavy bullets into the enemy positions on the other side of the battlefield. The barrage continued for ten more seconds until Matt pulled the vehicle out of harm's way, leaving the Honey Badgers and Dijer on their own.

"This is fucking insane!" shouted Nate, leaning out from behind an intact pickup truck to scope out any possible mercenary targets. A pair of stray rounds pinged off the vehicle's hood, each leaving a deep dent in the painted metal surface and forcing the sniper back under cover. "Son of a _bitch_! Al, Steve, they spotted us!"

Steve glanced at Amanda and pointed toward the sounds of enemy gunfire. _"Get a few grenades over there and let 'em know we mean business. Serge, set up Baba Yaga here and give us some suppression fire. Nate, pick off anything that pops up with a gun or cheekspots. Kevin, Zoey, Kuri, Jexis, we're gonna work our way from car to car and clear off this freeway! Only human survivors, got it?"_

Kevin grinned and patted his assault rifle. "No problem."

"_GO!"_ Steve dashed off toward a cluster of seemingly abandoned cars. Almost immediately, the low _thunk_ of Amanda's grenade launcher sounded from behind them, along with a hollow crack from Nate's Barrett. Kevin slid down to the street beside the closest vehicle he could find, taking cover while Zoey and the rest of his squadmates split up to find their own cars to search. Reaching up to the door, he wrenched it open and aimed the assault rifle inside.

A stocky, elderly woman lay dead at the wheel, her chest dripping blood and her eyes squeezed shut in pain. Suppressing the surge of nausea building in his stomach, Kevin checked the rest of the car for survivors, then moved on to the next one. His search revealed nothing more than an empty vehicle. The occupants had most likely abandoned it as soon as the attack began.

_BANG! BANG!_ Two sharp reports from Zoey's AK sounded across the highway. Kevin looked over just in time to see Steve grabbing a wriggling yellow blob from inside an intact car and holding it up while Zoey plunged her bayonet into its belly and impaled the little chu on it. She spun away just as Steve drew Origin, took aim briefly, and fired a white phosphorous incendiary bullet into the car, igniting a Rosey who was struggling to free herself from the straps of her little car seat. The larva struggled and screamed, thrashing around as she was burned alive. Steve simply watched the baby chu die, chuckling to himself while Zoey continued stabbing the Sonee.

Frustrated, Kevin drove the stock of his assault rifle into the window of another car, shattering the glass. A chorus of screams sounded from inside as he popped the lock open and kicked the door, ready to introduce its Electric Hedgehog Pokémon occupants to a wall of hot lead and pain.

"DON'T SHOOT! DON'T SHOOT!" yelled a black-haired woman who appeared to have been in her 30s. Her two children, a pair of young boys, lay huddled on the car seat, whimpering in fear as they stared at the Jerkop. It took Kevin a few seconds to realize what he'd nearly done.

"Arceus. Are you okay? Are you okay?" he asked frantically, lowering the Kalashnikov. "Don't worry, we're gonna get you out of here! Anyone else inside?"

"Just us!" replied the mother, relief and panic blazing in her eyes. "Oh God, what's happening?"

"Revolution, ma'am," Kevin replied with a grim smile, and helped her get the kids out of the car.

_CRACK! BOOM! _Further down the highway, the S.A.V. took a direct hit from a loyalist Javelin missile and staggered backward a few steps, its chest a sizzling mess of armor and machinery. The Transformer had been severely crippled by the explosion. Another shot like that and the Jerkops would be on their own in terms of fire support.

"Go! Go!" Kevin herded the woman and her children away from the car, keeping a wary eye on Steve all the while. The squad leader had located an injured man trapped in an overturned pickup truck, and was currently in the process of pulling the civilian to safety as bursts of loyalist and Jerkop fire crisscrossed overhead and rebounded off the clusters of wrecked vehicles around them. The S.A.V.'s targeting system must have been destroyed by the missile, because it was now firing its autocannon up into the air and spinning its upper body around randomly.

Gritting his teeth, Kevin moved from car after car in a frantic search pattern. Most of them were empty, and the ones that weren't either held one or two dead human civilians or a few injured ones that needed to be rescued. No chus yet, though. He hoped Steve and Zoey hadn't just cleared out the only car on the freeway full of helpless Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. Judging by the lack of gunfire and screaming chu larvae, Kuri and Jexis weren't having much luck either.

A bead of sweat slid down Kevin's cheek from his eyebrow, mingling with the dust and grime coating his face. _Move. Keep moving. Get to the next one. The sooner you finish, the sooner they can blow this whole road to hell._

"IS PERFECT DAY FOR PLAYING WITH BABA YAGA, SHOCK-PIGS!" Serge bellowed. Through the snaps and hisses of bullets flying past, Kevin heard the minigun warming up behind him. Not a moment too soon, the mechanical roar of Baba Yaga filled the air, forcing the entrenched mercs and EHPF officers to seek cover wherever they could. Seizing the opportunity, Kevin sprinted out of cover and fired two bursts from his AK, then headed for the last major pile of cars he could see. Steve had taken shelter near the center of the highway, blasting away at the enemy lines with more white phosphorous rounds from Origin. So far, the squad leader had turned a VW Beetle into a small inferno and was in the process of doing the same to a minivan.

Once again, Kevin smashed out the front window of the first car and did his normal sweep. Empty. So were the second and third. The fourth, however, yielded his first catch of the day.

"AAAAAHHH!" shrieked a Rosechu as a heavy kick from the Jerkop's boot reduced her car's windshield to a shower of broken glass. "NOOOOOOOOOOO! SAVE ME! SOMEBODY S-"

Kevin didn't even bother telling her to shut up. Lifting the AK like a club, he drove the wooden stock into the chu's skull at point blank range, instantly breaking her neck with a loud _crack_.

"WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! MOMMMMMMMYYYYYYY!" wailed a pair of Roseys from the backseat. Like the one Steve had just incinerated, the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon were securely buckled into their Rosey-sized car seats, making it all too easy for Kevin to climb through the shattered windshield and gut both of them with George's hunting knife in less than fifteen seconds. As the larvae shrieked and writhed and clutched at their lacerated midsections, Kevin felt something small and fat wriggling next to his pant leg. Looking back, he could see a Sonee struggling to heave its plump, dense body out of the car, its sneakered stumpfeet kicking wildly in midair. The baby chu hadn't even hesitated before attempting to save itself, thereby leaving its sisters and mother behind to die at the Jerkop's hands.

Kevin decided then and there to grant the selfish little bastard a particularly nasty fate.

"Need some help, spunky?" he said condescendingly, and slid back down through the windshield and into the street. The Sonee hung by its tiny armstubs like a fuzzy ornament, its static cling keeping it attached to the dashboard while it kicked and wriggled helplessly. Kevin watched its pathetic struggle for another second or two, then plucked the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon out of the car and tucked it under his armpit. It immediately tried to shock him with a Spark, but somehow missed its target entirely and promptly gave up. Self-preservation, apparently, was just too much hard work for the little homebred.

"WET ME GO!" it wailed as Kevin dashed over to rejoin Steve and the others. "WET ME GO!"

"_That's it, we're done!"_ the squad leader yelled into his headset. Leaping to his feet, he fired off a last shot from Origin and stowed the revolver. _"Fall back! EVERYONE FALL BACK!"_

"We got the airstrike?" Kevin shouted, clutching the wriggling Sonee as he and the other Honey Badgers hastily retreated back toward the barricade of wrecked cars.

"_Al just put out the call to Menchi-Nasu,"_ Steve replied. The right sleeve of his white sweatshirt was now dotted with red splashes of blood from the chu family he'd just murdered. _"Good job out there. As soon as they take out the road, we're gonna have to carve our way out of Get-Tar."_

"Believe me, Steve," panted the Jerkop, "I have _no _problemswith that." The captured Sonee whimpered pathetically and began kicking him in the side. It didn't hurt at all, but Kevin delivered the baby chu a forceful slap across its belly nonetheless, resulting in a shrill scream.

"_Arceus knows they could all use a good spanking,"_ commented Steve as the five operatives slid back behind the barricade to rejoin the rest of the squad. _"Good job, guys. Anyone get hit?"_

"Serge took hit in knee," reported Serge, and flicked away a bloody two-inch-long shard of shrapnel as if it had been a mere splinter in his thumb. The injury hadn't even fazed him.

"Yeah, we're good," Nate added, and glanced down at the Sonee that Kevin had captured. "Aw, did you bring me back a present, little bro?"

"I think your Barrett could use a silencer," Kevin replied with a massive grin, positioning the Sonee's bottom right over the barrel of his older brother's sniper rifle. "Watch this."

"Wat awe you doi-WAAAAAAAUUGHHGUHGUHGUGHUGHUG HGGHGHGHHHH!"

"_That's it, we got the freeway clear," _reported Steve, wiping a smear of ash from his gas mask as Al and Dijer hurried over. _"What's the damage report look like so far?"_

The Straw Dogs commander gritted his teeth in fury. "Not good. They took out the S.A.V. and two of my men – another three injured. We would've lost half the squad without you guys."

"Glad we could help. Matt, bring her back," Al waved to the Battle Bus on the other side of the highway, where Nick was providing fire support to a small group of entrenched Straw Dogs. Behind the Legend, Kevin and Nate were busy forcing the end of the Barrett up into the Sonee's butthole, crushing the baby chu's organs and making it shriek with pain and terror as the Jerkops effectively impaled it all the way through its chubby body from ass to mouth.

"That's just fuckin' _wrong_," Amanda said, shaking her head in disapproval. "I keep tellin' you, you need to go _slower_. The little bastard's gonna die too quick now."

Kevin looked up at her. "There's plenty more where this one came from. We've got all day."

"Damn right." The Jerkop shouldered her grenade launcher and squinted up at something in the sky. "Yo, check it out! Special delivery from Menchi-Nasu, you Sparky motherfuckers!"

"_EVERYONE BRACE!"_ shouted Steve as the Crackders shrieked overhead. Kevin hit the ground just as the first explosions rocked the highway, shaking the entire structure as if it had been nothing more than a toothpick bridge. For a moment, he wondered if the bombers had taken out one of the support columns by accident, and if the whole thing was going to come crashing down with two entire Jerkop squads still on it. Then a massive cheer rang out across the barricade. Looking out over the highway, Kevin could see the asphalt and concrete crumbling and falling apart like clumps of dry sand. The entire stretch of road collapsed down into the street below, taking with it any vehicles and corpses that the Jerkops had left behind, as well as the few EHPF officers stupid enough to linger by the edge and shake their fists at the PVCC operatives.

There was nothing they could have done for the dead men, women, and children in those cars. Time was short enough already, and removing the dozens of bodies would have resulted in even more collateral damage to the city's innocents.

"Fucking fantastic job, guys," Al complimented the Honey Badgers as Matt pulled up to retrieve them. "We're on our own for now in terms of support. The Red Devils can take it from here."

"_Finally, something good,"_ grunted Steve, and stepped into the bus. _"What now?"_

The Legend pointed to the other side of the gap in the highway. "Nick, Nate, give 'em a little sniper fire as a parting gift…what the _hell_ did you do to that rifle, Nate?"

Nate shrugged and patted the Sonee impaled on the front of his Barrett. Incredibly, it was still clinging to life and kicking vigorously. The little chus really _did_ pack a lot of action…it just only seemed to manifest in situations like this. "Just an improvised silencer, sir."

"Indeed," Al replied, visibly impressed. "Carry on." He turned to Steve and lowered his voice as Nate hurried down the aisle and took up a sniping position from the window seat next to Nick's. "We're losing the eastern front. Clyde's reserves almost got annihilated by Wild and Simonla before they could even hit the edge of the city. They're in full retreat…looks like we're not getting any reinforcements from 4-cent_garbage anytime soon."

"_Aw, fuck."_ Steve crashed into the seat next to Zoey and ripped the gas mask off his face, ruffling his hair with his free hand. "Fucking hell. Any more bad news?"

"Yeah." Al took a long swig from his canteen. "Three ChinaTown squads went up against Punchy and Layla over in the Lower Central district. It's a fucking disaster – no one even knows what happened to them. Joe says the UAV's been spotting ambulances carting dead and injured Jerkops over to CWCville Prison. Three guesses as to what they're gonna do with the live ones."

"Un-brainwashing," hissed Steve in helpless rage. "Arceus."

"Exactly." The Legend's fingers curled into a fist. "Looks like we're going to have to play by our own rules for a while if we want to make this offensive worth anything. No more fucking around with this 'freeways and airstrikes' bullshit – we're hitting these bastards where it _hurts_."

Zoey perked up. "I'm in. Any ideas on where to start?"

Al smiled and pointed out the window. Through the chaotic din erupting through the city, Kevin could barely hear the tolling of distant bells.

"Hit them where it hurts," echoed Steve, following Al's finger back to the target. His blue eyes narrowed into a frozen stare of hatred and anticipation as they settled on the massive steeple of the CWCville Central Church of GodJesus. "Yes. YES. Oh sweet fucking Arceus, _YES!_"

"Hmm?" Kuri glanced up from her new tekko-kagi. She hadn't decided on a name for the weapon yet, but so far, she'd settled on filling the injector reservoir with the contents of a bottle of lemon juice that Al had given her as a present. "Well, _you're_ certainly excited today, Steve."

"You should be excited too, Kuri." Steve replied as he reached over and patted her on the arm, near the deep scar that Angelica Rosechu had given her back in 2004. "We're going to church."

* * *

**West CWCville, Get-Tar district, CWCville Central Church of GodJesus, 12:38 p.m.**

"May the Lo0rd have mercy on those who slander us!" shouted the white-furred Sonichu preacher, pointing savagely to his copy of _Sonichu #5_ to emphasize the crudely-drawn scenes of Jerkop caricatures terrorizing and beating up young couples. "Since that love-hating witch Mary Lee Walsh created it, the PVCC has made a mockery of this city! Y'all should know! Y'all can see it on the news and in the streets! Trolls! Jerks! Homos! Despicable insults to our Lo0rd!"

"Oh, for fuck's sake…" muttered George as a roar of utter outrage swept through the gathered congregation of Sonichus and Rosechus. The few dozen humans among them remained seated in the pews, either praying silently or comforting each other while the chus ranted and raved around them. Having to deal with several dozen religiously retarded Electric Hedgehog Pokémon was a small price to pay for protection from the war that was sweeping through the city outside.

"It'll be okay, honey," Missy June reassured her husband in a forceful whisper. "We'll just go back to the Soup Hotel when this is all over. Just ignore them. They're all gonna die someday, and you can bet that we'll be there to see it happen."

"God willin', that'll happen _today_," added Carl from his seat beside the homeless couple. "Frank, ya good-for-nothin' bastard, get the big man upstairs ta send more fire an' brimstone already!"

"If he's up there…and he actually _exists_, God probably doesn't want anything to do with this asshole of a city," George growled. Organized religion had never particularly appealed to him, and having to witness this bastardization of Christianity wasn't doing much to change his mind.

"Those JERKS," continued the preacher from the front of the church, "have disrupted our way of life, promoted the _vile_ act of homosexuality, caused stress among our species, and have even gone as far as to slander the good and _honest_ name of our mayor, Christian Weston Chandler!"

The Sonichus and Rosechus erupted into a cacophony of overly dramatic gasps and disgusted shouts. George let out an exasperated sigh and sank back in the pew, placing a hand across his face. Something soft and fuzzy slammed into him and squeaked loudly. Uncovering his eyes, the hobo sat up and stared down in revulsion at a tiny Sonee attempting to crawl onto his lap. Only the youngest of the chu larvae accompanied their parents in the main part of the church – the other homebreds had been sent to Sunday school so they didn't get stressed out. Unfortunately for George and the other humans who had taken cover in the church, the idea of proper parenting for the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon was to let their spawn wander around wherever they wanted.

"Sonee! Goo-goo! Sonee!" cried the baby chu as it heaved its plump body onto the bearded man's leg. Gritting his teeth disgustedly, George snatched it around its torso and handed it back to the Rosechu who had abandoned it. It took him several attempts to finally get her attention.

"You lost your baby…_ma'am_," he grunted, suppressing the _"you vapid whore"_ he would have liked to add in place of his last word. "Watch your children more carefully next time, please."

"Don't tell my heartsweet what to do, you jerk!" the Rosechu's hubby-bolt retorted as his wife hysterically grabbed the squealing Sonee away from George and began cuddling and tickling it in a ridiculous display of maternal affection. "Y'all be quiet and listen to the word of our Lo0rd!"

George ignored the Sonichu and turned away. Any more insanity and he might have snapped.

The preacher raised a remote and clicked on a lazily-assembled PowerPoint presentation set to soft Christian rock, filled with dozens of pictures of Sonees and Roseys trying their best to look like adorable little children, rather than the hideous dead-eyed mock-babies they really were.

"Look around on the streets! What have y'all seen? Hundreds of our innocent babies lying dead on the ground…murdered by those dreaded homos for their inherit hatred of all that is pure, and Lo0rd knows, there's nothing purer than an innocent baby!" He smiled and raised both gloved hands in the air as the chu congregation loudly voiced their approval. Some Rosechus even held their children aloft and shook them roughly, making the larvae squeal and giggle with happiness.

Now it was Carl's turn to groan. Thankfully, the collective shouts from the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon churchgoers drowned out his voice. Missy June shot him a sympathetic glance, but she herself seemed on the verge of a breakdown. On the way in, she'd been accosted by a trio of Roseys who had unsuccessfully tried to climb up her legs and paraskirt down. It had been nearly impossible for her to resist punting the repulsive little chus all the way into the next county.

"But fear not!" continued the white Sonichu. "For in 2 Kings 2, a group of dirty homo JERKS mocked and belittled the prophet Elisha, and GodJesus sent two female bears - with true and honest chinas, ovaries, and uteruses - to end the lives of those trolls and end their slanderous ways! And so, as the PVCC mock and slander the good name of the Lo0rd's greatest servant and our mayor, he will bring justice to them too! Y'all will be his faithful pawns, carrying out his will by ridding our great city of CWCville from its troll plague once and for all!"

"YEAH!" The Sonichus in the crowd leapt to their feet simultaneously and struck heroic poses while the Rosechus swooned and fawned over their sweetbolts. It was almost too much for George. Only Missy June's reassuring hand on his arm prevented him from storming up to the pulpit and beating the snot out of that smug recolor and any others who tried to stop him.

"So homos, trolls, atheists, JEWS, and everyone else who goes against the Lo0rd and our mayor, y'all had better run, 'cause GodJesus will show you NO MERCY! And neither will we!"

The lights flickered. Somewhere nearby, a loud explosion rocked the church. Never before had George actually been eager to have a building collapse on him. As long as it silenced the chus, he would gladly take death in an avalanche of concrete and brick over…

_CRASH!_

George, Missy June, Carl, and the rest of the amassed humans and Electric Hedgehog Pokémon whirled around in their seats as the front wall of the church literally buckled outward and exploded into a massive cloud of dust and flying chunks of debris. Seconds later, part of the roof caved in as well, shattering the giant circular stained glass window instantly. The colored glass picture of Angelica Rosechu disintegrated in an iridescent shower of fragments that rained down on the collapsed chunks of wall like glittering rain.

There came a single flash from beyond the ruins, and the thunderous report of a sniper rifle echoed through the church. Breathless, George turned around to see the Sonichu preacher toppling backward off the pulpit, a dark red stain blossoming across the white fur of his chest.

The screaming and shooting began a moment later.

Advancing in a makeshift firing line, the Honey Badgers emerged from the cloud like harbingers of doom, blazing away with their assault rifles and shotguns at anything with yellow or pink fur they could see. Ten chus and six larvae died in the first five seconds, torn apart by the furious storm of flying bullets before they could dash or waddle away. The rest of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon immediately scattered, some of them abandoning their own children in their haste. Frightened though they were by the gunfire around them, the human refugees were smart enough to stay down and hide, knowing full well that the Jerkops had no intention of massacring them.

"_This_," yelled Kevin over a loud burst from his AK-47, "is more like it! Awesome shot, Nate!"

"Thanks!" Nate shouted back, and loosed off another shot from the Barrett. The Sonee impaled on its muzzle spasmed once, and across the room, a Rosechu fell dead, her skull obliterated in a fraction of a second. The Jerkop sniper swung to the left, dropped to one knee, and blasted another Rosechu twice in the back, bracing the heavy rifle's stock against his shoulder to avoid recoil. Kevin contented himself with taking potshots at the nearest pair of chus he could find, smiling in immense satisfaction as the lovehogs' bodies flew apart before his vicious onslaught.

Beside him, Allie advanced step by step, firing her pistol again and again at the tiny crying Sonees and Roseys, bursting their misshapen heads open and punching gaping holes through their fat little bodies. Trogdor the Burninator hissed gently on her back, stowed for safekeeping until the Jerkops could get the civilians clear of the church. For now, she and her comrades had to use extra caution when shooting in such a crowded place. Baba Yaga was out of the picture entirely – not even Serge could keep the monstrous minigun tamed once it started spinning.

By now, a few of the more foolishly brave Sonichus were attempting to stage a hasty and slipshod retaliation. With limited room to move, though, Spin Dashes were next to impossible. The best they could do was to try and zap the oncoming Jerkops to death, but in their panic and confusion, several ended up firing Thundershocks into each other or their own babies, one's Spin Dash ended up careening off course right into a statue of the Virgin Mary, and arguably the most successful attempt at fighting back was pulled off completely by accident. Zoey was in the process of shooting the legs off a shrieking Sonee when a yellow blur zipped past and slashed her three times in the elbow with its razor-edged quills, drawing a gush of blood and temporarily putting the Jerkop's left arm out of business. Reacting almost instantaneously, Nick spun around and swung his machete down across the chu's curled body, opening up its torso and spraying its innards in every direction due to the sheer momentum of its Spin Dash.

The systematic slaughter of the panicking Electric Hedgehog Pokémon churchgoers continued on and on for some time, during which Jexis managed to pull off an absolutely incredible kill by throwing her scalpel into a Rosey's eye as it paraskirted down from the top of a pew's seat. Kuri, who perhaps had figured that there would be a Sunday school full of Sonees and Roseys for her to test out her new and improved tekko-kagi on, contented herself with annihilating the youngest larvae with short, controlled bursts of P90 fire. She didn't care if the injuries were fatal or not – every last ounce of pain she dished out to the baby chus was simply another act of vengeance for her murdered family.

For Kevin, it almost seemed too easy. They had the upper hand, the element of surprise, and enough firepower to practically wipe out a city block. As the chus died and his assault rifle blazed away, all he could think of was whether or not he and the rest of the Honey Badgers would be able to stand against an enemy as powerful as one of the Chaotic Combo. They'd fought Angelica before, yes, but she would have undoubtedly learned from her defeat at their hands. Wild could have very well torn them all to pieces had Simonchu not intervened. As for Punchy, Bubbles, and Magi-Chan…well, Kevin didn't particularly want to think about fighting any of them in the near future. For now, the best thing he could do was to help his squadmates purge the church of any remaining Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

After what seemed like five minutes of constant gunfire, the thunderous barrages died down, and with it, the ferocity of the Jerkops' assault finally waned.

"Clear left!" shouted Zoey.

"_Clear right!"_ Steve responded.

"Clear center." Al ejected his M4's magazine and swapped it out. "Good job all around. Head down the aisles and check for chu survivors. That was a nice idea with the C4, by the way."

"Never let it be said I don't know how to make a damn good entrance," chuckled Amanda as she patted the tiny detonator on her belt. "Hope that was worth it. I don't have any more blocks."

The dust cloud rolled away behind them as Matt pulled the Battle Bus forward, directly into the church. Several steel cables had been attached to the vehicle's front battering ram – cables which the Honey Badgers had used to pull down the entire wall after blasting the corners loose with the plastic explosives. They could have just walked in through the front doors and started shooting from there…but that just wouldn't have been anywhere _near_ as fun as the alternative.

"I missed the good parts, didn't I?" Matt asked as he stepped off the bus with his AA-12 in hand.

Al waved him over. "Just get in there and check for survivors. Look on the bright side – you just ripped down an entire fucking wall with a _school bus_. That's got to be worth _something_."

Kevin slung the AK-47 back across his shoulder and drew both his Beretta and George's hunting knife as he made his way down the aisles, passing clusters of shivering, terrified human civilians. If there were any chus left alive in the main room of the church, they were probably in no state to put up much of a fight. Al, Steve, and the rest of the squad were already putting down as many of the injured Electric Hedgehog Pokémon as they could find, as well as any baby chus who had managed to hide and escape the first barrage. Over in the far side of the room, Jexis ascended the stage, knelt down and reached inside the pulpit, then reappeared clutching a Sonee by its sneaker while the baby chu struggled and bawled in terror.

"WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

Wordlessly, the blond girl slid the blade of her scalpel into the larva's belly and sliced it open laterally, then reached inside its chest cavity with a gloved hand and pry its ribcage apart. The tiny bones cracked and split like dry twigs, allowing Jexis to push two fingers into the space between its lungs and seize its tiny, pounding heart.

"SONEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" screeched the baby recolor.

"Oh, don't be such a baby," the medic replied cynically, and crushed the throbbing organ into a fatty paste between her fingers. "Heart Levels come back with enough Fuzzy-Wuzzies!"

"GACK! HRRRRGGGGHHH! WUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH!" The Sonee's eyes bulged out of their sockets as it gasped in pain and began spasming wildly, kicking its stumpfeet and grasping at its vivisected body in a pathetic attempt to put its heart back together. The Jerkop placed it on the pulpit and watched it slowly die, soaking the copy of _Sonichu #5_ with a mixture of blood and urine. The massive amounts of pain and stress had caused it to release its bladder.

"No they don't," Jexis whispered as the baby chu let out a final shuddering gasp and lay still.

Kevin turned away from the gruesome sight and focused on searching the aisles. Most of the civilians had managed to overcome the shock of being caught in the middle of a full-blown massacre. Al, Steve, and Zoey were doing their best to comfort those who were still traumatized. Matt hurried over to join him, eager to start racking up his first kills of the June Offensive.

"Nice driving for someone who smoked three pounds of weed in two hours," commented Kevin.

"It wasn't _that_ much." Matt gently shoved his squadmate aside and planted the heel of his boot into an injured Rosey's face, crushing her skull. "And the Squirtle smoked most of it, anyway. You think they've got any communion wafers here? I'm fucking _starving._"

"Well, there's Roseys all over the place." Kevin grinned evilly as his friend shot him a withering death glare. "Take your pick. I'm pretty sure they all taste the same."

"Funny. Real funny."

"Kevin?" a familiar voice called out in astonishment.

The Jerkop froze dead in his tracks. No. No, it couldn't be.

"KEVIN!" yelled Missy June as she, Carl, and George dashed out of the blood-spattered pew and nearly bowled him over with a triple hug. "Where the fuck have you _been_? Four years, you little bastard! _Four years!_"

"Yer lookin' good, kid," added Carl, nodding in approval at Kevin's assault rifle and pistol. "Got yerself a job as a goddamn rebel, did ya? Frank'd be proud 'o ya, that's fer sure."

"I…know…" wheezed Kevin as he fought to extricate himself from the hobos' embrace. "Missed…you guys…too…"

"Uh, hi," Matt cut in awkwardly. Kevin looked up to see that Allie and Nate had joined them. "I'm guessing there's an explanation for your little family reunion, right?"

"Yeah." The Jerkop smiled. "I lived with these dirty bastards in Soup Hotel #4, remember?"

"Living arrangements really improved after you guys came in and remodeled the place," added Missy June. "You ever try and fall asleep when some little hedgehog-rats start crawling all over the bed and shitting in the sink and whining and…" Her voice devolved into a snarl of rage. "Fucking little shiteating cocksucking rat bastards. But you killed 'em all, didn't you?"

"Language, Missy," George warned his belligerent wife. His eyes were firmly fixed on Kevin's. "Frank was right about you, kid. People like you and your friends…you're going to deliver this city back to the people someday…back to us. And when that happens…" He raised a hand to his forehead in salute.

Kevin blinked and looked from George to Carl to Missy June. "What do you mean, someday? The city's under attack. We're taking it back _today_! You can come with us and help kill the…"

"Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe a year from now," the homeless man sighed, and stroked his wispy beard. "Maybe I'm wrong, kid. Just know this – the city ain't yours until the Combo's dead in the streets and Chandler gets guillotined. When that day comes, we'll be there."

"Stay safe, George." Kevin stepped forward and hugged the old hobo tightly, then drew the hunting knife and handed it to him. "Here. I said I'd give this back when I…"

"And I said that you're going to shut up and keep it, Mr. Shaw." George twirled the knife around and slid it back into the sheath on Kevin's belt. "That blade's tasted more chu blood in four years than someone like me could feed it in four lifetimes." A fierce smile spread across his face as he reached out and grasped the Jerkop's shoulder. "Now go and feed those little bastards to it. See you around, kid."

Without another word, George and Missy June turned and walked away towards the gaping hole in the church wall, holding each other's hand as CWCville burned in the distance. Carl looked as if he was seriously considering Kevin's offer, then shrugged and followed the pair of hobos out into the war-ravaged street.

"And here I was thinking after 2004, we wouldn't get another chance to blow up a building, kill ridiculous amounts of baby recolors, and save a bunch of hobos," commented Matt as he began scratching his head. He checked his AA-12's magazine. "Funny how these things work out."

"Speaking of which…" Allie holstered her pistol and heaved Trogdor around off her shoulder.

Nate smiled. "You just read my mind. Let's go kill 'em all."

* * *

**CWCville Shopping Center parking lot, 12:43 p.m.**

Wiping a trickle of sweat from his spiky brow, Wes-Li Sonichu leapt onto the roof of the nearest vehicle – a white pickup truck - to survey the battlefield. Jerkop squads were everywhere, clustered around parked cars and trucks and trading fire with the loyalist defenders and automated sentry turrets while mortar and RPG teams kept a constant stream of shells and explosives soaring across the battlefield and into the glowing green dome that prevented them from storming the Shopping Center and killing every single loyalist and chu trapped inside.

The shield had already taken an immense amount of damage from the preliminary bombing, but at the rate his troops and the airborne drones were emptying their arsenals into it, not even Patti-Chan herself would be able to keep protecting the heart of CWCville for long. At least, he _hoped_ that would be the case.

"Wes Iseli to Mary Lee Walsh," he spoke into his orange walkie-talkie. "Commander, we just breached the outer defenses of the Shopping Center and are starting the assault. Air support seems to be lessening. What's going on? Over."

"_Just keep up the fire, Wes!"_ Walsh sounded like she was talking in the middle of a firefight at the moment. _"Our intel was solid – that shield should be down in less than an hour! We've got most of our Crackder fleet engaged with Angelica over Samuel Memorial! Once they take her down, you'll get your goddamn air support, over!"_

"Copy that, Commander." Wes cursed under his breath and leapt off the truck as a pair of empty Punislavs screeched to a halt on either side of his perch and transformed into mech form. "We've got heavy armor support arriving to assist the ground assault and I've got some of my squads setting up an FOB for the siege. I'll keep you posted. Out."

The orange Sonichu stowed his radio and dashed across the parking lot toward a large group of Jerkops and Manajerks unloading tactical equipment and ammunition boxes from more transport Punislavs and vans. Scott Palazzo, the Jerkhief commander assigned to head the ground assault, stood at the center of the chaos, casually directing his operatives to set up a makeshift base of operations while three S.A.V.s in mech form provided cover fire against the enemy defenders.

"How long, Scott?" Wes asked as he skidded to a halt and pressed his medallion, shifting back into human form. "I just got through to Walsh – looks like our air support's gone angel chasing."

"Son of a bitch," growled Palazzo. He reached up and adjusted his glasses. "We'll have overpowered the defenses soon enough, but we're never going to crack that barrier without more firepower, Iseli. You understand? If we're going to take the city today, we need _more_!"

"I can't call in any more airstrikes than Menchi-Nasu's directing," responded Wes angrily. "That unholy bitch keeps taking out our Crackders. We're gonna need Silvana or a few choppers with _real_ pilots to bring her down."

"That reminds me, we've got new reports. Not good." The Jerkhief pointed to the nearest monitor he could find – a laptop hooked up to a cell phone. It wasn't much, but it was enough for them to see the damage the PVCC had suffered thus far into the June Offensive.

"Mother of _fuck_." Wes gritted his teeth as he stared at the UAV feed. "How many Transformers did they take out so far?"

"Five S.A.V.s and counting." Palazzo glanced at the bottom of the screen. "Wait, six now. At least that Shocking Surf didn't do anything to them. Thank Arceus for Robotnik."

"Sir!" reported Joshua Martinez as he and Lori Lopez hurried over to the Jerkhief and the PVCC administrator and saluted. "Chupacabras are deployed and on the field! Where do you need us?"

"Move up and join the Naïvigators and the Spikes of Blue on the central approach," replied the commander, pointing down the parking lot to where an S.A.V. and a Punislav were trading shots with a heavily damaged sentry turret. As they watched, the brown-painted Transformer staggered backward and fell smoking to the ground, its torso riddled with armor-piercing explosive rounds.

"Damn it!" roared Wes, and slammed a fist against his medallion. In a flash of light, he'd returned to his Sonichu form. "That's it! I'm heading to the frontlines with them! We're bringing that shield and this whole fucking mall down on their heads if it's the last thing we do!"

Palazzo saluted. "We'll keep up the assault as best we can. Focus on taking out Darkbind."

_ZOOM! _The orange Electric Hedgehog Pokémon dashed away with a quick burst of speed, tearing across the parking lot and reaching the foremost assault squad in less than five seconds. It was as if he'd simply teleported – another one of the greatest gifts the medallion had bestowed upon him. That, and the incredibly useful ability to stand a chance against members of the Chaotic Combo in single combat.

"Commander Iseli, sir!" A female Manajerk with heavy green combat armor and bleached blond hair approached him, her cheek stained with blood from a shrapnel wound just above her nose. A tiny LIESA unit floated in the air beside her, observing the battlefield and marking exposed targets for the massive Transformer stationed behind the entrenched Picklemen. Every few seconds, the S.A.V.'s autocannon would lock on to an enemy unit and fire, either killing them or forcing them to instantly seek cover from the explosive shells.

"At ease, Emily." Wes raised a gloved hand and pointed at the larger of the two robots. "Does your squad have direct control of that S.A.V. unit?"

Emily glanced over to a Jerkop who looked to be controlling the robot with a heavily converted PSP. "Yeah, that one's ours. What do you need Gherkin for?"

"I'm calling out Darkbind," explained the Sonichu grimly. "I'll draw him away from the fighting while you take out that sentry tower." He looked towards the aforementioned structure, which was currently aimed skyward and attempting to gun down the Crackder squadrons. "We take those out, and Menchi-Nasu can get the airstrikes back on target once Angelica goes down."

The Manajerk nodded silently and made a single hand gesture to her squad leader. "Understood. Go get that purple son of a bitch, sir."

"With pleasure." Wes vaulted over Emily's cover and landed on the battlefield, then dashed to the side as a rattling volley of machine gun rounds from one of the automated turrets chewed up the asphalt around his sneakers. Looking across to the edge of the Shopping Center, he could barely see what looked like an incredibly hasty defense line of loyalist mercenaries set up behind rows of sandbags, while Darkbind Sonichu himself stood well out of the way, commanding the human mercs as heroically as he could. There were no EHPF chus in sight, since the majority of them were currently fighting in the city itself. The PVCC had concentrated their main efforts on separating the Combo, while simultaneously launching the assault on the Shopping Center.

Patti-Chan's energy shield, though, was making that assault extremely difficult.

"DARKBIND, YOU PATHETIC CREATURE!" Wes yelled at the top of his lungs, calling up the most stereotypical villainous lines he could think of to lure the purple Sonichu swordfighter. "COME OUT AND FACE YOUR DESTINY, COWARD! YOUR DOOM AWAITS!"

Even if Wes hadn't been expecting an eye-rollingly valiant retaliation, his enhanced reflexes gave him more than enough time to dodge Darkbind's leaping slash attack. The sword clanged off the asphalt and shuddered violently, giving the orange Sonichu a perfect opportunity to land the first strike while his enemy stood stunned from the backlash of his furious charge. Chuckling, he rolled into a ball and launched himself right towards Darkbind's chest to deliver a lethal blow.

_WHAM!_ Somehow, the purple Sonichu managed to counter the blindingly fast attack by rolling forward and meeting the Spin Dash with a reflexive kick that sent Wes hurtling off course into the side of a pickup truck. Whirling around so that his cape billowed impressively behind him, Darkbind raised his sword and charged with a yell. This time, Wes was ready for a counterattack.

"Try harder, you sniveling wretch!" he taunted, faking a dodge to the left and bolting in the opposite direction as the blade sheared down through the vehicle's chassis. Entering ball form again, Wes slashed the enemy Sonichu's side with his quills, following it up with a heavy dual-fisted blow to the back of Darkbind's shoulder blades. A lesser chu would have been felled by the attack, but this was no ordinary Electric Hedgehog Pokémon…just an overpowered wannabe.

"Your evil shall not triumph today, Wes-Li Sonichu!" Darkbind shouted, whirling his sword around and clutching his bleeding side. "By the power of RuleCWC, I shall vanquish you and return my balls to awaken my beloved Zelina!"

Wes laughed and sent a Thundershock arcing into the blade, stunning his foe for a few precious seconds while he delivered a shattering kick into Darkbind's face. "Balls, balls, balls! All you ever do is talk about your precious balls, homo! Does Zelina know about you and Magi-Chan?"

"YAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" screamed the Sonichu, and launched himself at the orange Wasabi descendant with his sword whirling through the air like a steel propeller. "HOW DARE YOU! I AM STRAIGHT, YOU VILLAINOUS SCOUNDREL! HAVE AT YOU!"

Wes smiled and glanced to his left as one of the towers erupted into flames and fell. Emily and her Picklemen had done their job admirably. All he had to do was keep this utter buffoon occupied long enough for the Jerkops to gain enough ground to make a difference.

"Ladies first," he snickered, and began charging up another Thundershock.

* * *

**West CWCville, Get-Tar district, CWCville Central Church of GodJesus, 12:46 p.m.**

"_They're going to kill us,"_ Caitlyn whispered to the older, brown-haired woman working beside her, trembling with fear as the horrific sounds of gunfire and high-pitched shrieks echoed through the besieged church. _"Oh God, oh Arceus, they're going to kill us too…"_

"_They're rebels, not savages,"_ Virginia Sanford replied calmly. _"All they want is __them__."_ She glanced around the room, grimacing at the garish collection of nearly sixty fat fuzzy baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon waddling around the Sunday school without a care in the world.

_VeggieTales_ was playing as usual, an appropriately Christian program the chus had selected to help instill Christian values into their dim-witted offspring. Most of the babies were simply staring vacantly at the screen and cooing at the bright colors, ignorant of anything important that the show might have taught them. For the most part, they were enjoying themselves, even the Sonees who reflexively recoiled every time Larry the Cucumber appeared. Their hatred of pickles was too deeply hard-wired for them to even bear the sight of anything phallic.

As per their standard behavioral patterns, the larvae did not seem to notice the war zone outside or the sounds of the massacre taking place in the sanctuary, save for a few that had recently complained to Virginia about how all the noise the Jerkops downstairs were making it hard for them to listen to the TV. Several of the selfish Sonees _were_ crying in despair, but only due to the fact that they were afraid that the jerks and homos would steal their Playstations while they were at Sunday school. Some of the Roseys naturally tried to comfort them, but quickly gave up and went back to babbling on about clothes and dolls and salads and finding sweetbolt Sonees.

In another corner, a group of larvae were perusing a 'proper' version of the Bible, that is, a heavily-edited and Mayor-approved comic book featuring recolor versions of Joseph, Mary, and baby Jesus. Most of the content had been replaced with Chandler's somewhat misspelled rants about homosexuality, along with instructions detailing how the Sonees and Roseys should lead good, straight lives in the service of the GodBear. This was the "introductory" god for baby chus – an omniscient, ethereal bear that was replaced by the GodJesus deity when they evolved.

Needless to say, almost none of the original Bible text remained unmolested by Chandler's edits.

"Tee hee!" giggled a white-furred Rosey as she and another Sonee tried to flip the pages with their useless limbs. "Da homows awe gonna go ta heck wif da west of da homows!"

"YAY!" the group of larvae shrilled all at once, eagerly slapping their armstubs together.

"If I see any homo twolls, I'm gonna send dem ta heck mysewf!" a Sonee bragged smugly, thus earning the instant adoration of the nearby Roseys.

"Da homows wiwl buwn whiwe good Sonees an Woseys go ta heaven!" squealed a particularly fat blue-furred Sonee as he waddled up to the book and strenuously flipped to a poorly drawn page of several somewhat-recognizable trolls crying out in agony while burning in a pit of fire. "Wook wat da book says! Any swandewous twoll an homow wiwl face etewnity in heck fow dere cwimes against da Mayow!" Printed on the bottom of the page, in a much smaller font than he could read, was a single line. _Thanks to Family Guy for alerting me of this fact. - C.W.C._

"YAY!" The nearby Sonees and Roseys cheered, and collectively gathered around to listen.

"If…if da book says dat dey go ta heck, da homos go ta heck an we go ta heaven 'cuz we're good Sonees an Woseys!" the self-appointed Sonee preacher shouted, curling an armstub in the air in an attempt at dramatic rhetoric…or perhaps at replicating Chandler's infamous "claw". Whatever the case, the group of babies squealed "YAY!" again, pleased to hear someone else telling them that they were good. If they were good, they would get presents and candy!

Meanwhile, another group of Sonees and Roseys had grown tired of the talking vegetables and had congregated at the toy box, frolicking with blocks, balls, and other baby toys that were too simple to cause any sort of stress. Behind them, a white-furred Rosechu with a crucifix around her neck sat smiling at the children, pleased that they were being such sweet little babies and learning about the word of the Lo0rd. Next to her, a second Rosechu glared at Virginia and Caitlyn bitterly, wondering why on earth they could even think of neglecting their city-ordained duty of caring for the homebreds and making sure that every one of their needs was met.

"What would God and Jesus think of y'all abandoning the children like that?" she scolded. "If the children get too stressed, you'll both be in _big trouble_!" Her admonitions fell on deaf ears.

"_We have to get out here,"_ murmured Caitlyn to Virginia as the sounds of approaching footsteps drew closer and closer. Outside in the hall, they could hear doors being slammed, more gunfire, and faint, terrified shrieks. The Jerkops were sweeping the church room by room, rooting out any Electric Hedgehog Pokémon that had survived the first extermination. _"They're coming."_

"_The window,"_ Virginia whispered as soon as the Rosechus were distracted by their insipid charges again. Step by step, the women backed toward the nearest window, eyeing their captors all the while in case one of them looked up. Gritting her teeth, Caitlin plucked a random Sonee up off the ground, then cuddled the baby chu in her arms as it laughed and wriggled around.

"Hey there," she crooned, stroking the larval chu's soft headspikes while covertly testing its weight. Thankfully, the homebred's body weighed in at about 20 pounds – the average for its species. It would be more than enough to serve her purpose. "Want to help save the day for us?"

"YAY!" The Sonee's mouth curled into a wide harelip smile. "I'm gonna sayve da day 'cuz…"

"I know, I know," muttered Caitlin, and hurled the fat baby recolor through the window.

_CRACK! SMASH!_ The Sonee smashed through the glass like a plump fuzzy rock, screeching in pain as the jagged shards sliced its torso open. A sickening _crunch_ sounded as it hit the street outside, followed by a shrill wail of agony. It was now or never for Caitlin and Virginia.

"What in the name of GodJesus is that noise?" one of the Rosechus shouted as she leapt to her feet. The other Electric Hedgehog Pokémon larvae hadn't noticed the horrific fate of their comrade, but the sound of shattering glass quickly drew their attention…for about two seconds. The adult chus, however, were more than capable of figuring out what had happened.

"GET BACK HERE, YOU TROLLS!" screamed the other Rosechu as she leapt for the window. Virginia managed to pull herself through the opening, just in time for her former captor to see Caitlin stomping the glass-encrusted Sonee into a red smear on the concrete. "OH GODJESUS! Y'all will go to hell for killing that innocent baby, you HARLOTS! GodJesus will puni-"

_CRASH!_

"BREACHING! BREACHING!" shouted Zoey as she and Kevin stormed into the room with their AK-47s drawn and raised, nearly ripping the wooden door off its hinges in the process. Both of the PVCC operatives now bore high quantities of bloodstains on their clothing, which only served to shatter the hearts of the assembled Electric Hedgehog Pokémon even further.

It was difficult to tell exactly what happened first, but before Kevin knew what he was doing, he and his fellow Jerkop were opening fire into the air, filling the room with dozens of loud, short explosions of sound that sent the homebred larvae scurrying for cover and - in the case of the Sonees - unloading their bowels onto the floor from the fear and stress they were experiencing. As the Rosechus whirled around in fright and shock, Zoey lashed out with her bayonet and drove it straight into the first screaming female chu's chest, effectively impaling her victim while Kevin brought the second one down with a well-placed kick to the gut. Drawing his pistol with his free hand, he knelt beside her, jammed the gun to her temple, and fired.

The hollow crack of the gunshot was matched by a second one from Zoey's assault rifle that pierced the first Rosechu's aorta, sending her collapsing to the floor as blood sprayed across the rug. A nearby Rosey screamed as the hot spray struck her in the face, drenching her pink fur with dark red drops. Glaring at the little chu with hatred and disgust, Zoey drew the bloody bayonet back and lunged down, embedding it deep in the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokemon's fatty torso.

Kevin didn't even care about the multitude of screaming, stressed homebred Sonees and Roseys waddling away from him and Zoey as they scanned the room for any human refugees or surviving adult chus. It wasn't as if the babies were going anywhere fast. The Rosey skewered on Zoey's bayonet struggled and wailed and tried to push herself loose, but her weak armstubs proved just as useful in her dying state as they'd been during the time she'd been alive.

"Good entry, good response, good kill," Zoey complimented her squadmate as the little chu slid off and plopped to the floor, choking out a weak gurgle in its final moments. She stepped on its head slowly, smiling as she felt the tiny skull crunch under the heel of her boot. "Nicely done."

"Thanks." Kevin wiped a smear of Rosechu blood from his AK. "You clear on your side?"

"Yeah." The Jerkop shouldered her weapon and turned to face the door. "Steve, we're good!"

"_Praise the Lo0rd."_ Steve Morrison stepped into the room, still speaking through his gas mask's air filter. _"So how many of the fat little fucks did we bag in here?"_

"Enough to justify all the shit we're gonna have to go through today," replied Kuri as she, Matt, Nate, and Allie followed their squad leader into the room. Raising her tekko-kagi to her mouth, she shot the terrified larvae a sadistic stare and ran her tongue along one of the injector blades, tasting the tart lemon juice housed inside. "Looks like it's time I put Al's present to good use."

"_Well, I helped,"_ Steve muttered somewhat lamely, then grinned at his Jerkops. _"Have fun."_

"Gladly," Allie reached up and hefted Trogdor the Burninator off her back. "Let's make this quick."

"WAAAAAHHHHH! SAYVE US!" screeched a trio of Roseys who were desperately clinging together and crying their hideous eyes out. Their hopes of any form of rescue by a brave and spunky Sonee were quickly dashed when Matt shouldered his way forward and annihilated them with an automatic triple blast from his AA-12, churning the larvae into red mush in a heartbeat.

"WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" The room exploded in a collective wail as the horrid baby chus finally realized just how much danger they were all in. Their sickening cutesy behavior immediately gave way to their most basic instinct – self-preservation by any means possible.

The arrogant Sonee who had bragged so much about sending the 'homo trolls' to hell was now crying in terror and shitting himself as he waddled away from the murderous Jerkops. Hastily pushing two Roseys out of the way to save himself, he suddenly tripped, leaving said Roseys to absorb a deadly barrage of bullets from Kevin's AK-47. Proud of his cleverness, the Sonee giggled smugly as the shrieking baby chus exploded into showers of red mist behind him. It wasn't cowardly that he had used his former playmates as shields, because that had been what the Loord had intended him to do. He would survive because GodJesus had chosen him as the hero to stop the trolls and save CWCville from the slanderous…

"WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" he screamed as Kevin casually stepped forward and grabbed him by the tail before he could make it another two feet. Heaving the baby up off the ground, the Jerkop whirled him around and effortlessly slammed him down into a nearby active radiator with enough force to shatter every one of the larva's ribs, his spine, and his pelvis.

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!_

"WAAAGAGGGHHGHGHHGGHSSSHGHG! SAYVE ME GODBEAWR!" the formerly proud Sonee screeched in burning agony as the red-hot metal blackened his fur and seared his skin off. A jet of urine sprayed out of his crotch flap and immediately evaporated into a flesh-searing steam, causing him to sink further and further down until his eyes pressed against a radiator bar and began to bubble and melt. The last thing he realized before his mind snapped from the pain was that he knew, at last, exactly what going to hell felt like.

The white Rosey who had giggled over 'homo trolls' being sent to hell was now also in a hell of her own, panicking and wailing in fear as she watched her playmates being slaughtered around her. Waddling over to the TV in desperation, she screwed up her face as hard as she could and summoned up a weak supply of bioelectricity to her armstubs, then used her static cling to shimmy up the side of the flat screen. Her mother had always taught her that when she needed to escape danger, there were four things she could do: win the awe of her enemies by winking cutely, paraskirting away, praying to GodBear, or getting a brave Sonee or Sonichu to save her.

The Rosey giggled again. She was so smart! She was going to do all four of those things! Stumbling off the top of the TV, the plump little larva felt her skirtachute billow out beneath her, slowing her descent. On top of that, she began winking furiously, praying to GodBear, and waiting for a Sonichu to save her…at the same time. What she got instead was Nate, who ended her descent by grabbing her fat body so hard that her head momentarily swelled with blood.

"Well, well, well." The Jerkop grinned at her. "Do you know the Golden Rule, little Rosey?"

The Rosey winked. "Tee hee! Woseys desewve speshul tweatment because we're so speshul!"

Nate frowned and pressed the EJECT button on the VCR, then removed the tape. "Looks like you need to watch more _VeggieTales_. Actually…better idea! You should be IN _VeggieTales_!"

"YAY!" The Rosey squealed in delight, despite the guns blazing and her supposed friends dying around her. She was going to be famous! She was going to be a movie star!

Unfortunately, her fantasy abruptly ended as soon as Nate shoved her feet-first into the VCR.

"WAAAAAAHHHHH!" the Rosey cried as the VCR began eating her stumpfeet like a meat grinder, dragging her fat body inside and ripping her to pieces. She was too fat to fit completely, but Nate helped by pushing down on her head until her legs and insides were ripped out until only her head remained, her mouth still open and screaming. The Jerkop let the Rosey be pulled apart for a few more seconds, then sliced her head off and set it on top of the VCR.

Another Sonee bawled in horror as he watched his heartsweet Rosey being repeatedly tortured by Zoey, unable to look away from the screaming pink blob impaled on her bayonet. He simply could not comprehend why the almighty GodBear didn't just come down and sweep the evil trolls away. After all, he was praying as hard as he could, and the nice Rosechu nannies had told him that the purpose of prayer was to grant any wish, regardless of merit or plausibility!

Before he could ponder any further about petitioning the divine, a single incendiary round, courtesy of Origin, drove into his body, effectively answering his questions with a big fat white-hot blazing NO. Across the room, Steve spun the revolver around on his finger, holstered it, and punted a nearby Sonee across the room, straight into the blades of Kuri's waiting tekko-kagi.

It took a few seconds for the effects of the lemon juice to kick in, but when it finally did, the results were more than worth the wait.

"EEEEAAAAAGGGGGHGHHHHHGHGHGHH AAAAAAIIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEE!"

"THAT'S FOR MILLIE!" screamed Kuri as she withdrew the claws from the Sonee's stomach and slashed them across its face, prompting another earsplitting cry. "THAT'S FOR DAIKI!" She pierced the screeching baby in both eyes, popping them like grapes and injecting a surge of acidic juice. "THAT'S FOR MOM!" As a final insult, she flipped the Sonee around and drove a single claw into its crotch flap, then squeezed the last of her reservoir into the little chu's mutilated genitals. "AND THAT ONE'S FOR PAPA, YOU WORTHLESS HELLSPAWN!"

Allie, meanwhile, was closing in on the tiny preacher Sonee. The fat larva stood trembling with fear, clinging to his Bible as if it were a Rosey and uttering tiny squeaks that were supposed to be prayers. He didn't know why this was happening. He had done everything that GodBear wanted him to do! Weren't the trolls going to get smited now? After another few moments of quivering and nearly shitting himself, he came to the most logical conclusion possible…it was all a test!

"Dat's it! Dis is all a test fwom da Lo0wd!" he squealed in sudden happiness to any Sonee or Rosey within earshot who was still alive. "We've been good bay-bees an GodBeawr wuv us!"

The baby chu knew in his heart that GodBear wouldn't let anything bad happen to him. He was the best Sonee in the room! He knew he was because Angelica Rosechu herself had blessed him during one of her visits to the church, and told him he was special and that the Lo0rd would always watch over him as long as he never had any homo thoughts. He remembered the last book burning his parents had taken him to…and he got to toss in a book of his own! _The Origin of Species_ had been heavy and stressful to carry, but he'd done it because GodBear wanted him to!

Allie simply grabbed him by the scruff of his flabby neck while he was lost in thought. A part of her wanted to simply set the obese little Sonee on fire and watch the fat sizzle around him and fry him alive, but there was a much, _much _better death waiting just on the other side of the room. A stone basin, full of holy water. The baby chus usually ignored it, save for the occasional Sonee or Rosey who somehow managed to climb up and get stuck inside.

"The Bowl of Wrath," she muttered to herself, chuckling with glee. This was Kuri-level sadism, the kind of thing that even Steve or Al would find impressive. Plus, given the fact that Allie and Kevin's relationship had just jumped up a few notches, she was in the mood for showing off.

"Put me down now you twoll!" shrieked the plump Sonee, gasping for air as his face turned even bluer than it already was. His flabby body rippled with every movement, making his fatty flesh jiggle like gelatin. "Wet me go! Wet me go or I'wl make GodBeawr smite you ta heck!"

"Tell you what," mused Allie as she plopped her prisoner down into the stone bowl, immediately defiling the holy water in the worst possible way. "I'll give you a chance to prove just how much you love your GodBear. If you pass, I'll let you go. If you fail, I'll burninate you. Sound fair!"

"YAY! I'm going ta win! I wuv GodBeawr!"

"Yes…I know." The Jerkop poked the Sonee in his immense belly. "You, my fat little friend, are going to have to survive…THE BOWL…OF WRATH!"

"You're not gonna drown him in a toilet bowl, are you?" asked Matt as he strolled past, carrying a Rosey by her tail and a Sonee by his ears. Both larvae were screaming shrilly, which might as well have been the sound of angelic choirs to the Honey Badgers. "Because I'm gonna need the bathroom to take care of these two. Don't ask."

"No problem. All yours." Allie turned back to her victim. "As I was saying, the Bowl of Wrath. Don't worry, only STRAIGHT Sonees will survive, as long as they love GodBear a lot."

The Sonee's joy could not have been more out of place. "YAY! Dis is gonna be easy!"

"You have no idea," snickered Allie, and grabbed another Rosey that was hugging her leg in fear. "Come here, sweetie. Bath time."

"GUGHUGHUGHUGHUHHHH!" shrieked the Rosey as Allie drove her SOG knife into its throat, slitting it wide open and squeezing the immense gush of blood into the bowl of holy water. The dying baby could only gurgle and choke as her life sprayed out and poured into the makeshift altar, turning the clear liquid a sickeningly dark crimson. Snatching a Sonee, Allie repeated the horrible sacrificial ritual until her blue-furred victim was sitting in a pool of blood up to where his navel would have been. The little chu could only stare at her, his eyes bulging out of their sockets from shock and utter terror. In the back of his mind, though, he knew it was all part of the test. The two babies she'd killed hadn't loved GodBear as much as he did!

"Okay then!" Allie patted the Sonee on the head when she was satisfied with the literal blood bath. "You ready to start?"

The baby chu nodded eagerly, making his cheekspots jiggle up and down.

"Alright then…DRINK UP, YOU LITTLE SHIT!" yelled the Jerkop delightedly as she grabbed the Sonee by his head and dunked him into the warm dark pool. Unable to swim and unable to see through the thick red substance, the Sonee reflexively screamed and opened his mouth to gasp for air, but instead took in a huge gulp of blood. Allie rolled her eyes as the weak baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon thrashed and struggled. She only needed one hand to pin him down.

After thirty seconds, Allie pulled the gasping chu back up. "Well? What did it taste like?"

"HUUURRRRGGGGHHH!" The Sonee retched, spewing a mess of blood and chicken nuggets into the bowl. "HUUUURRRRGGGGHHHH! DAT…DAT WASN'T FAAAAAAAIWR! YOU MADE ME DWINK BWOOD! IM NOT A VAMPWYER! DOSE AWE BAD!"

"So, you tasted blood, then?" Allie snickered. "Oops! If you _really_ loved GodBear and were a STRAIGHT Sonee, it would've tasted like water…or maybe wine. Hell, I don't know. See why it's so much easier being an Arcean? Whatever the case, you failed, and only HOMOS fail."

The Sonee's face contorted into an expression of utter tard rage, similar to how Chandler's face had looked after that glorious day in 2004 when the PVCC had slaughtered 35,000 feral larvae. It was exactly what Allie had been waiting for.

"I AM NOT A HOMOW!" shrieked the fat little chu. "I AM STWAIGHT! IMA TWOO AN HONEST STWAIGHT CHWISTIAN AN I WUV GODBEAWR AN DA HOMOWS AWE…"

_WHUMP!_

"WUH!" The Sonee fell forward into the blood bath as Kevin appeared from behind it with a heavy stack of Chandler's Bible comics and issues of the _Sonichu_ propaganda comic. Raising them up, he dropped them on top of the chu, forcing it face first under the surface again. More struggling and gurgling ensued, along with a bubbly _frrrrrrrppppp_ sound that Allie assumed was the Sonee losing control of its bowels again. In any case, it was trapped, and even with its massive lung capacity, it would drown soon enough.

It still wasn't enough for her.

"Stand back," she ordered. Kevin complied, smiling in anticipation as Allie hefted Trogdor up in her arms and fired a burst across the pile of books, bathing the Sonee's back in blistering flames and setting the worthless pages alight. Furthermore, she then took aim directly at the base of the bowl and unloaded a prolonged burst of white-hot fire that heated the entire pool of blood to boiling point in a matter of seconds.

Surrounded on all sides by blood, pain, fire, and his own feces, the drowning Sonee flailed and gasped, choking and struggling as the immense heat literally boiled him alive. It was difficult to tell which of the elements killed him first…but whatever the case, it was not over quickly.

When the larva's last spasms finally died down about four minutes later, all but fifteen of the Sonees and Roseys in the Sunday school had been slaughtered. Al and his small team of Jerkops had managed to root out a good twelve more hiding around the church, bringing the grand total of baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon survivors to twenty-seven. And when faced with a situation like theirs, the Honey Badgers could only think of a single word to adequately sum it up.

"_Yep. Definitely a Laughyland," _commented Steve as Serge and Nick each unceremoniously dumped a load of Sonees and Roseys into the Sunday school. The babies whimpered and whined and babbled on about how unfair the Jerkops were being, but waddled over to join the group nevertheless, shepherded in the right direction by swift kicks and pokes from Jexis and Kuri.

"I'll say," Al replied. "That one in the drinking fountain that swelled up and popped like a water balloon…whose was that?"

"Mine." Kevin grinned. "She was 'thiwstee'."

"What _is_ it with you and inflatin' them?" muttered Amanda out of the corner of her mouth as she passed him, carrying a Sonee under each arm.

"What _is_ it with you and exploding them?" Kevin replied.

Amanda paused. "Fair enough. Yo, Al, I'm savin' one of the lil' shits for a Baby Boomer, 'kay?"

"We don't have time for surgery now." Al pointed to the group of terrified larvae. "We kill them. Then we call HQ, see where we were supposed to be while we were taking this little detour."

"_Fuck,"_ Zoey muttered under her breath. Steve raised a hand to her shoulder, but she jerked away. "Al, is Joe still with us? Put him on speaker."

"_Yeah, I'm here,"_ Joseph Herring replied. _"We're holding all fronts for now, except the air battle's pretty much lost. Angelica and Magi-Chan keep taking out our Crackders. Walsh is pulling them out. Sorry guys, you won't have air support until those two are out of the game."_

Kuri cursed loudly and clutched her scarred arm out of reflex. Several of the baby chus gasped and attempted to cover their ears to block out the profanity, but seeing as how their armstubs were all much too short to reach their ears, this went about as well as one would expect.

"Joe." Al's voice held no more of his signature sadistic glee, only cold, calculated seriousness. This was the sober Al Ledger, the commander Al Ledger, the Manajerk Al Ledger. "Joe. We can at least try and take out Magi-Chan for you. Where is Silvana Rosechu?"

"_Hang on."_ More taps on a keyboard. With all the typing Joe was doing for them, Kevin was surprised that the operator's fingers hadn't yet atrophied. _"Silvana…Silvana…here we go. She's been pushing her way west with the White Medallions – they're on foot, almost at the rendezvous point. You're gonna have to floor it if you want to reach them in time…also, the shortest route's right through the center of the fighting. And guys…Sonichu and Rosechu just entered the fray."_

Al drew in a sharp breath. "Got it, Joe. Stay on the line and talk us through." He stowed the walkie-talkie and whirled to face the crowd of cowering chu larvae.

"Wet us go!" the foremost Rosey whined, her lower lip trembling as she gazed up at the Legend. "Dis isn't fun! I wanna watch Mewwy Poppins! You'we mean!"

The Manajerk tapped the handle of his 1911. "Stop looking at me like that."

"WAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" wailed the babies. The Rosey sniffled again, then suddenly brightened up as a brilliant idea entered her undeveloped brain. It was so simple, it had to work!

"YAY!" she squealed, and stared directly into Al's eyes, fixing the twin slits of his welder's mask with her soulless reptilian gaze. "I wuv you."

Kevin could almost hear the _snap_ as the Legend's final measure of patience shattered into a thousand pieces. Raising his right arm, Al reached to the end of his trenchcoat's sleeve and pulled the strap tight, then withdrew his nailgun gauntlet from a case in his backpack and began buckling it on.

"Wat awe you doing?" the Rosey asked, pawing at her head confusedly. "I towd you dat I wuv-"

"I know," said Al as he activated the gauntlet with a pneumatic hiss and grabbed the baby chu around her fat torso. "I wuv you too."

Before the Rosey could scream, the wind was knocked out of her in a flash as the Legend slammed her against a large wooden crucifix set into the wall. The carved figure of Jesus had been removed as per Chandler's orders that the larvae only be exposed to age-appropriate Bible stories, but even if it had still been there, it would only have gotten in the way. Al's blood had been roused, and now there was no stopping him. Raising the nail gauntlet, he pressed its tip against the Rosey's right armstub and squeezed his hand.

_PSSHHTTT!_ A three-inch nail plunged straight through the pathetic limb and embedded itself in the wood of the cross, effectively impaling the Rosey through what would have become her hand had she lived to adulthood. There wasn't that much blood, but there _was_ quite a lot of screaming.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH ! AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!"

_PSSHHTTT! PSSHHTTT! PSSHHTTT!_

"WAAAAAAHAAAAAAHAAAAAAAHHHHHH HHH! NO! NOOO! NOOOOOOOOOO!"

"_Much better,"_ commented Steve as Al stepped back to admire his work. The Rosey hung from the cross like a fat, pathetic facsimile of Jesus, her stubby limbs dripping with blood from the points where the thick nails had impaled them into the wood. Even as an Arcean-Christian, Al had no qualms when it came to defiling these mockeries of religion that Chandler and the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon had unleashed upon CWCville.

"Right," the Legend muttered, and adjusted his mask. "We're done here. Torch the rest and head for the Bus. Matt, Zoey, Steve, I want her prepped for heavy combat, ASAP. Are we clear?"

"Crystal," Zoey replied. "Fall in! Everyone fall in on me! We're moving out!"

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" wailed the twenty-six remaining Sonees and Roseys as Allie pointed Trogdor's toothy maw directly towards them and flipped the feed level down to SCORCHED EARTH. Half of the babies immediately scattered and tried to waddle away, but given that their pathetic stumpfeet could only carry them one meter every seven seconds, they didn't get far before the dragon's breath claimed them, too.

_FWOOSH!_

Kevin lingered behind and watched Allie torch the room, even as Al and Steve and the rest of the Honey Badgers dashed for the Battle Bus. She swept the flamethrower back and forth, looking on with cold indifference as the shrieking pack of chu larvae burst into flames.

The few Sonees and Roseys that were not incinerated instantly could only waddle around and scream and flail their armstubs as their fur blackened and burned off, leaving only a collection of smoldering, writhing black blobs where the babies had once been. Allie stood at the center of the inferno, wreathed in greasy smoke, torching everything in sight and laughing with insane glee from behind the safety of her welder's mask. Kevin could only imagine what thoughts of chronic and sustained cruelty were going through her mind as the dying Sonees and Roseys gasped and gurgled around her in their last horrible moments alive. The room was now little more than a roaring inferno, devoid of anything tainted by the vile touch of Christian Weston Chandler.

"Okay, that's good!" Kevin called out, shielding his face from the heat with his free hand while he waved to Allie with the other. "Get out here before the whole place goes up!"

"Don't you worry about me," Allie replied as she strode out of the flames and embraced her squadmate briefly before continuing on down the hall with Trogdor slung across her back. Kevin followed her, leaving the burning larvae behind while the faint screams finally turned to silence.

Apart from the Honey Badgers and the dozens of dead Sonichus, Rosechus, and their tiny babies, the main room of the church had been completely abandoned. The Battle Bus rumbled steadily in the street beyond the destroyed wall, and all of the Jerkops save Al had already embarked. Kevin and Allie hurried over, but were surprised to discover three PVCC operatives – two men and a woman – conversing with the Manajerk.

"…and our squad just isn't prepared for this level of enemy activity," the taller male Jerkop explained. It was plain to see that he was the most experienced of the three. "We've been getting nothing but bad news from the UAV feed, and now we're gonna be heading right into the center. I'm telling you, Ledger, we need your help_._"

"We can take you through the center of the fighting," Al replied quickly. "I'll need your squad to help man the turrets if we're going to make it through the gauntlet, though." He waved to Kevin and Allie as they hurried over to the Battle Bus. "Right. Here's the last two from my squad. Get yourselves situated inside with them – I've got one more call to make before we're clear to go."

"Thank you," the Jerkop sighed in relief. "Diana, Toby, on me."

"Which HQ are you from?" Allie asked as she and Kevin followed the newcomers into the bus. Behind them, Al was talking to Joe again, and judging by the sound of his voice, whatever news the operator was giving him was even worse than before. "You guys must have been split off of a bigger squad, right?"

"Tom Ovid, Pickled Ducks squad, based in Slumberland," grunted the man. He gestured to the woman and the shorter man with glasses and a hat. "Diana Aldren and Toby Connors. And no, this is all of us – we're a specialist team. Walsh is coordinating an extraction for Agents O'Neil and McKenzie…we get to retrieve the latter. Looks like your squad's gonna have to take us along for the ride until we get to Lightning, though."

"_Glad to have your team with us,"_ Steve addressed Ovid, and shook his hand quickly. _"Wait, hang on."_ He reached up and pulled off the mask. "That's better. Steve Morri-"

"Save the introductions for when we've got time, Steve," Al interrupted his lieutenant as he climbed on board and pointed to Matt. "Get us out of here, now. We shouldn't have done this."

"Agreed." The blond Jerkop leaned back in his seat and stared out the window, tracking a pair of Crackders overhead. "That one was on me, Al. I just…Arceus, I'm so _fucking_ angry right now!"

"Then you're not gonna like this one bit." Al flipped up his welder's mask and glanced across the Battle Bus. "Iseli's push to the Shopping Center just got royally fucked up. Darkbind, Jamsta, Lolisa, and Zapina held off the attack and took out about a quarter of his task force. Joe says we're in a stalemate now, but Walsh is going to try and breach the shield using Graduon. And we lost the beach. An entire goddamn unit of S.A.V.s up in smoke, thanks to Bubbles and Blake."

Each new announcement was another punch to Kevin's chest. Even with all they'd been through, all the chus they'd killed, all the new weapons and Transformers they'd acquired…the PVCC was being soundly routed by a handful of ludicrously overpowered recolors.

"Son of a _bitch_." Amanda looked about ready to start punching the Rosey she'd grabbed from the church to use as a Baby Boomer. She and Jexis had set up a makeshift operating table in the back of the bus, in order to replace the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's belly fat reserves with clumps of C4. Without using anesthetic. Before she could unleash her rage on the wailing Rosey, Jexis leaned over and slit the little chu's belly open with her scalpel, revealing an ample supply of yellow adipose tissue.

"It's all right, Amanda," the young medic said calmly, her eyes focused on the gaping wound. "We take out one of the Combo, and the rest shouldn't be too much harder."

"Overpowered shock-pigs are not easy for Serge to destroy," Serge grumbled. Baba Yaga was seated next to him, and the Jerkop had an arm wrapped around his weapon as if it were a lover. "If you can get Serge close to purple crazy shock-pig, Serge could…"

"No. No, Serge," Zoey warned him, bracing herself as the Battle Bus skidded around a corner and entered the heart of the Get-Tar district.

The frontlines of CWCville stood before them - the single most vicious battle in the entire June Offensive. Through the buildings, Kevin could see a vast cloud of black smoke billowing up from the ground, punctuated by sharp flashes of gunfire and sizzling bolts of bioelectricity. Crackders soared through the burning haze and unleashed volleys of missiles down into the streets, while S.A.V.s in vehicle form raced past the bus toward the center of the fighting. The ground shuddered, and in the distance, a small apartment went up in flames.

Throughout the district, the pandemonium continued on a smaller scale. Human families fled in droves, tripping over and trampling dozens of ferals and also homebred larvae who had been left behind by their Sonichu and Rosechu parents. Here and there, bands of wild dogs and Pokémon had been drawn out of the slums by the sounds of battle, and were now making short work of any Sonees and Roseys waddling around in the streets. The PVCC might have been losing the battle, but the city itself had acquired a taste for blood now. It was as if CWCville itself knew of the parasitic organisms that now ruled it, and was doing everything in its power to wipe the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon plague from its streets.

Unconsciously, Kevin reached over and grabbed Allie's hand, squeezing it in the hope that it might quell the cold fear rising in his chest. What lay ahead for the Jerkops was nothing short of the greatest single battle they had ever faced in the eight years since the chu occupation began. It had all come down to this - one last, desperate attempt to reclaim what had once been their city.

But just to _survive_ the June Offensive, the Honey Badgers would need to pass through hell first.

* * *

**East CWCville, Upper East district, 1:14 p.m.**

"NO! NOOOOOOOOOOO! PWEEEEEEEAAASE-"

The Sonee's final scream was abruptly silenced as Kacey Devoria brought her foot down on its stumpfeet and crushed them against the asphalt, then raised her pistol and blasted a hole in the little chu's skull. Whirling to the left as the homebred spasmed and died, she cursed and ducked out of the way, just in time to avoid a furious Thundershock from the Sonee's father.

"Try it again, Sparky," she panted under her breath. Sure enough, a second bolt of lightning sizzled overhead and missed, giving the young woman ample time to leap to her feet and put about ten new orifices in the Sonichu's head with a concentrated burst from her M4. Since the three Jerkop squads under her command had managed to force a retreat out of both the EHPF and the loyalist mercenaries sent to deal with their eastern incursion, the operatives now had free reign to begin introducing any chus in the area to a taste of CWCville justice.

Around her, sparse gunfire rattled through the air at irregular intervals, signaling the discovery and summary execution of another hidden cluster of baby recolors or a cowering chu family. The sheer effectiveness of her ground campaign had given Kacey new hope for the faltering June Offensive. From what she'd heard on the radio, most of the PVCC's other pushes into enemy territory had ended in utter failure and massive losses. The death count was still fairly low due to the Jerkops' shock-dampening gear, but capture reports were coming in with alarming regularity.

It was Kacey's job to make sure that didn't happen to any of her squads – the Deathbreakers, the ALBinos, and the Tomgirls – or the three Punislav Transformers they were using as fire support.

"Commander Devoria!" Kacey glanced up as Jackie Romy dashed over to her, her left cheek smeared with blood and black soot from the first shootout. "The block's been secured, ma'am. No sign of Sonichu or Rosechu. If Liquid hasn't lured them out yet, they'll be heading our way."

"Let's just hope to Arceus that Chris finds them first," Kacey murmured. Her face fell for an instant as she remembered her boyfriend's smiling face, his cute glasses, even his stupid paper medallion that he insisted on wearing everywhere he went. Somewhere, Chris was probably fighting for his life to push through the battle lines and draw Sonichu's attention, while her squads were just exterminating Electric Hedgehog Pokémon babies and families.

"Do you want us to hold here and run another sweep, ma'am?" Jackie asked.

Kacey shook her head. "No. I'm sick and tired of picking off the leftovers while good operatives are getting killed out there. Assemble your squad. We'll move toward the battlefront and draw some of the pressure off the Wilderness squads. You're not a cleanup crew – you're Jerkops."

Jackie's eyes suddenly grew wide with surprise as she noticed something in the street behind Kacey. "No…no need for that, commander. I think the battle just came to us."

The young Miscreant turned slowly, dreading what she might see when she looked up. Part of her didn't want to believe it had all come down to this, but another part knew the horrible truth.

The royal couple had found them at last.

"Take your weapon, Sonichu!" cried Rosechu as she raised her lightning sword and snapped into a combat stance. Its jagged blade crackled in her hands, giving off a sizzling aura.

"Just turn me loose sweetheart; I am my own weapon!" Sonichu shouted, clenching his hand into a defiant fist. His cheekspots sparked with deadly energy. If his father the Mayor had been there to see it, he would have most definitely described it as "zappin' to the extreme".

Kacey drew in a terrified breath as Jackie circled around to protect her and began shouting orders to her Jerkops. Feeling for the switch on her M4, she clicked it down to full auto and braced the stock against her shoulder to intercept the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon as soon as they charged.

"Orders, ma'am?" Jackie growled tensely.

The commander raised a hand, her gaze fixed directly upon the hated lovehogs. "OPEN FIRE!"

* * *

**West CWCville, Get-Tar district, 1:19 p.m.**

"Arceus…" Zoey whispered in horror as the Battle Bus rumbled past what appeared to have once been an entire block of apartments and stores. "I used to live there…it's gone. It's all gone."

Al handed her his canteen, swishing around the dregs of vodka left inside. "Here. Drink that."

"Everyone…stay frosty," Steve instructed through gritted teeth, wincing at each new thunderous explosion from the battlefront ahead. "We'll get through this. We didn't walk out of hell just to end it all in some stupid blaze of glory."

"Damn right," muttered Zoey, and chugged the rest of the canteen in one swig.

Kevin fought to stay calm, forcing himself to keep looking out of the windows. The Honey Badgers and their three new comrades from the Pickled Ducks were less than a minute away from the frontlines, and each passing second brought with it a new and unsettling set of chaotic scenes. The sunlight was gone, blocked out by thick clouds of smoke that billowed out from the burning structures across the city. Crackders were few and far between now, but the sounds of falling bombs and missile strikes continued on through the streets as the battle raged on. Now, the usual snaps and zaps of gunfire and electricity had been joined by additional sounds – the metallic clatter of S.A.V.s and Punislavs transforming and rolling out, the deafening clatter of autocannon fire, and weird electronic hums as the Transformers locked and fired on their targets.

Even now, the young Jerkop could see the drones' bulky figures looming through the hellish red haze that blanketed the city. Many lay broken and shattered throughout the streets, while their active compatriots fought on bravely in the face of nigh-insurmountable odds. Jerkops rushed through alleys and down the main streets, on foot, by truck, or by Punislav. There must have been dozens, even hundreds, all gathered from the deepest reserves of Menchi-Nasu, Wilderness, Slumberland, and ChinaTown. A few operatives looked up and waved to the Battle Bus as it passed, but the majority of them marched on solemnly, their faces grim and emotionless.

The whole thing made Kevin want to curl up in a fetal position and cry until he couldn't anymore. If Nate hadn't been sitting in the seat behind him and Allie hadn't been holding his hand, he probably would have suffered a nervous breakdown then and there.

"Okay, hold her down. Easy…easy…last stitch, and…done!"

Kevin looked over his shoulder to see Amanda and Jexis finishing the Baby Boomer operation on the Rosey they'd grabbed from the church. The little chu had passed out from the pain, and was now shuddering and making feeble "goo-goo"s while the blonde-haired medic dabbed blood away from the sutures on her fuzzy belly. He only hoped Amanda didn't get too trigger-happy while the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon larva was still on board the Battle Bus.

"That," Diana coughed, "is disgusting. How much C4 did you _put_ in her?"

"'Bout three and a half pounds," Amanda replied. "This little shit's gonna blow up _real_ good."

"Right, that looks good. I stabilized her." Jexis ripped the surgical mask from her face and began gathering up her bloody tools. "She'll wake up in about an hour. All yours."

"Fantastic." The Jerkop grinned and cradled the Rosey in her arms. "Hey, Al, where we at?"

"One minute from the front," the Legend announced, and stood up as the Battle Bus rumbled violently back and forth. "Everyone LISTEN UP! I want every window up and every firing slit filled!" He whirled around and pointed to the empty space beside Matt. "Serge, you're the plow. Set up in front and get Baba spinning."

"Is Serge's pleasure," Serge replied, and heaved the minigun off its seat with a grunt.

"Ovid, you're left, Aldren, you're right, Connors, you're in the back," Al ordered, hurriedly selecting each of the Pickled Ducks to man the bus's side and rear machine gun turrets. "We're gonna need someone to take the roof."

"Right here!" Amanda's hand shot up instantly.

"You're gonna need a spotter," Steve added. "Nick, you're with her!"

"Couldn't be happier." The sniper rose from his seat enthusiastically. "Up there, I am _God_."

"Forty seconds!" yelled Matt. A sharp _clang_ sounded through the vehicle as a wayward bullet ricocheted off the front bumper, just above the plow. "Fuck! That almost clipped the engine!"

"We'll be fine," Nick replied with a grin, shouldering his rifle as he made his way to the ladder that led up to the Battle Bus's grenade launcher and lookout post on the roof. "So long, guys."

"Likewise." The Legend turned to his remaining Jerkops. "Steve, Zoey, you're in charge of our defense while I call up Menchi-Nasu and find out what the hell went wrong. Think you two can manage a whole busload of killing machines?"

Both of the squad leaders nodded.

Satisfied, Al shouldered his M4. "Then do us proud, Honey Badgers." He raised a fist. "PVCC!"

"PVCC!" the Jerkops roared, raising their fists skyward. "RISE! RESIST! REVOLUTION!"

"HONEY BADGERS!" Steve shouted at the top of his lungs, taking Al's place as the Legend retreated to contact Joe back at Menchi-Nasu. "You know what it's gonna be like out there! We're outnumbered and outgunned! We lost our air superiority and our reinforcements! They've got the Combo out for blood, and we know they're gonna fight to the last breath." The Jerkop grinned. "_But_ _we're_ _still_ _in this_. And now they're gonna have to learn the hard way about what happens when you fuck with the Honey Badgers." Lifting the XM8 upright, he pulled a full magazine from his belt and slid it into the breach with a muffled click. "Let's go show them."

Kevin clutched his AK-47 against his chest as a shiver ran down the back of his neck. He couldn't tell whether it was anticipation, excitement, terror, or a combination of all three. All he knew was that even if the PVCC lost the offensive and every one of his squadmates and friends lost their lives in the battle, he was locked in this war to the bitter end. Everything hinged upon this one final push, this one desperate attempt to reclaim the city and drive back the loyalists. Walsh had made it clear from the very beginning. No retreat. No surrender. No holds barred.

"NOW GIVE 'EM HELL, HONEY BADGERS!" Steve continued, raising the loaded assault rifle above his head with one arm. "GIVE THEM HELL, OR MEET THEM THERE! PVCC!"

"ENTERING THE FRONTLINES!" screamed Zoey as the Jerkops hurriedly whirled around and jammed the barrels of their rifles and submachine guns through the firing slits on both sides of the Battle Bus. Above them, two hollow reports from Nick's sniper rifle rang out again and again, mingling with the rapid _thunk_ of the grenade launcher turret. "FIRE! FIRE AT WILL!"

Clenching his teeth, Kevin zeroed in on the nearest flash of yellow fur and squeezed the trigger.

"BARRICADE! EVERYONE BRACE!" yelled Matt, flooring the Battle Bus's accelerator as the armored vehicle came alive with a thousand thunderclaps of gunfire. "SERGE, LIGHT 'EM THE FUCK UP!"

"AAAAAHAHAHAHAHA!" the giant Russian bellowed, laughing madly over the mechanical roar from his minigun's six spinning barrels. Stealing a quick glance ahead, Kevin could see what looked like dozens of soldiers in blue combat armor scrambling to get out of the way. Baba Yaga's wrath was simply unmatched, raining down destruction and chaos upon anything unfortunate enough to cross Serge's line of fire. "FLEE, COWARDS! FLEE FROM SERGE!"

The bus shuddered violently, plowing straight through the barricade with a colossal crash and a spray of sparks. Thrown off by the collision, Kevin managed to raise a hand and shield his face just before the impact hurled him forward into the back of the next seat, stunning him briefly.

"Get up! Get up!" Allie shouted, and pulled him back up. Trogdor the Burninator was of no use inside the bus, so her weapon of choice had been downgraded to her pistol. "Kevin, you okay?"

"I'm fine!" Kevin shook his head to clear it and turned back to the window. The Battle Bus had stopped dead in its tracks, its wheels spinning uselessly and throwing up debris and ash as Matt struggled to free the massive vehicle from the ruins of the loyalist barricade. "FUCK! What happened?"

"Matt, what the hell are you doing?" Steve yelled, blasting away indiscriminately with his XM8 out of the forward left firing slit. "Get her out of there!"

"I can't! We're stuck! We're fucking stuck!" Matt hammered the gas pedal again and again, but to no avail. He punched the console radio. "NICK! You guys okay up there? What did we hit?"

"_Can't see it from up here!"_ the sniper's voice responded through waves of static and the sharp rattle of gunfire. _"Get us out, fast! We got a merc platoon and EHPF coming in from the west!"_

"Everyone, keep up the fire!" Steve commanded as he dropped the XM8 and grabbed up Origin and his kukri. "Kevin, Nate, give me cover from the door! I'll get up front and cut us loose."

"Fuck that, Morrison," Al snarled. "Stay here. She's my baby, and I'm getting her out."

"Arceus!" swore Steve, and turned to the Shaw brothers. "Kevin, you're going out too. Keep Al covered from the ground; the Sparkies are gonna try and fry the engine while we're stuck. Nate, you're gonna pick off anything Nick can't. You two with me on this?"

Nate raised his Barrett, showing off the dead Sonee that he'd impaled from ass to mouth on its barrel. "Let's see how they like getting sniped by their own babies. You with me, little bro?"

"Always," Kevin replied, and slid a grenade into the launcher on his AK-47.

"Open the door, Matt," commanded Al, drawing his M1911. "I'm gonna need your wrench."

Matt obediently tossed the heavy tool to the Manajerk, then pulled down on the door control lever. With a pneumatic hiss, the Battle Bus's front door retracted, revealing the debris-strewn wasteland that had once been a thriving commercial hub of the Get-Tar district. Most of the buildings had already collapsed, and those left standing seemed to be just on the verge as well.

Al stepped out onto the street slowly, almost casually, ignoring the metallic pings of bullets ricocheting off the opposite side of the bus. Quickly sweeping the area, he tucked the wrench under his arm and crouched beside the rumbling vehicle to assess the damage.

From inside the Battle Bus, Kevin's vision had been restricted to whatever lay just beyond his own dirty window and parts of the front windshield. Outside, an entirely different scene was unfolding. Whatever the PVCC had intended to achieve here now lay buried beneath a churning, blazing battlefield of fallen apartments, stores, and dozens of wrecked cars. Battle lines had formed between Jerkop and loyalist squads along lines of cover that had once been walls, while Sonichus zipped back and forth to unleash electric attacks on the entrenched rebel operatives. The PVCC, however, still held the advantage of heavy armor, but their Transformers were slow and cumbersome, as opposed to the lightning-quick speed possessed by the EHPF. Kevin couldn't tell who was winning or who was losing. All he knew was that many more good men and women were going to die if they didn't get back on the road soon.

"INCOMING!" Steve shouted, pointing wildly to the northwest. "Matt, get down!" Flashes of light appeared from the cockpit as he stepped around the Jerkop and jammed the barrel of his XM8 through the nearest firing slit. On the opposite side, Kevin heard a Sonichu cry out in pain, followed by a meaty crunch as it slammed into the bus's armored surface.

"We're caught on a pipe," Al muttered while Kevin took up a firing position at the front of the Battle Bus. "Wheel's okay, but I'm going to have to do some radical reconstruction here."

"Fine! Okay!" yelled Kevin, his heart pounding as he spun left and right in search of the incoming EHPF attackers. "I don't care what you have to do - just do it _now_!"

"Couldn't agree more." Raising the wrench, Al began hammering away at the weakened pipe, denting its rusted surface and slowly bending it down off the wheel. "How'd _this_ stop us?"

Kevin didn't answer. His mind was locked into survival mode, and it wouldn't be long before…

"SO-NI-_CHUUUUU_!"

Lightning seared across the Battle Bus's hull and arced away into the ground, three feet from where Al was working. Kevin reflexively fired a burst toward the Sonichu, but missed in his haste. Two retaliatory blasts from Nate's Barrett sent the chu zipping away again, but it didn't take more than five seconds for the next to appear. They were actually using tactics for once, testing the Jerkops' defenses for weaknesses before they mounted their main attack.

And unfortunately for Kevin, it appeared that they had just found one.

"For the Creator! Zap to the extreme!"

"Prepare for defeat, you villainous JERKS!"

"SO-NI-_CHUUUUUU_!"

"FUUUUUCK!" screamed Kevin as five Sonichus in EHPF uniforms hurled themselves over the debris, charging the Battle Bus and rolling into Spin Dash form. "AL, GET BACK IN THE-"

A green and orange blur zoomed past him, moving at such a high speed that the shockwave knocked the wind right out of Kevin and sent him tumbling to the ground. Gasping for breath, he pulled himself up to see another Electric Hedgehog Pokémon slam into the foremost EHPF officer, nearly annihilating the surprised Sonichu in a whirling storm of blood, yellow fur, and razor-sharp quills. The newcomer wasted no time gloating, instead choosing to deliver a crippling kick to the next closest foe. Taken off guard by this unexpected attack, the other three officers promptly uncurled themselves and fired a triple Thundershock, but the green Sonichu was no longer there. Kevin could hardly keep up with the battle as it played out before his very eyes, but all he knew was that whatever Electric Hedgehog Pokémon had just saved his and Al's lives was obviously no friend of the loyalists.

"Don't shoot the green one!" he yelled back to Nate. "Al, how much longer?"

"COME ON! COME ON, YOU STUBBORN PILE OF SONEE SHIT!" roared the Legend, and slammed his wrench into the pipe again and again. The metal tube was still lodged beneath the Battle Bus, despite his best efforts.

"We're gonna have to evacuate her!" shouted Steve. "Al, for fuck's sake, we're gonna get torn apart if we-"

"SHUT UP, MORRISON!" Al delivered a furious kick to the pipe with his steel-toed boot. "FUCK! GODDAMN IT! ALLIE! ALLIE, GET OUT HERE!"

"SO-NI-_CHUUUUU_!"

The Thundershock slammed directly into the Battle Bus's windshield, along with several bullets from the mercenary squads trading fire with the Honey Badgers and Pickled Ducks. Kevin leapt away a few feet, then switched over to his grenade launcher and sent a 40mm explosive round sailing high over the battlefield like a mortar shell. He couldn't see whether it had connected with anything, but he didn't care.

Allie appeared in the doorway and hurried down, nearly slipping on the last step as the massive flamethrower hissed in her arms. "Al! I'm here! What do you need?"

"Turn your pilot light all the way up and stick it under this pipe," the Manajerk instructed. "If we can't bend it, we'll cut the whole damn thing off."

The Jerkop flipped down her mask and knelt beside the pipe, then jammed Trogdor's mouth up against its rusted surface and twisted a knob on the side. Sparks began to fly as the white-hot impromptu welding torch seared through the thick metal, turning the dull grey a brilliant orange.

Kevin rose and fired two long bursts toward the loyalists on the other side of the Battle Bus, his hands shaking as the AK-47 shuddered and kicked against his shoulder. He could hardly see a thing through the waves of smoke rolling across the battlefield, but at least _some_ hope for survival remained now that the new arrival was currently kicking an unbelievable amount of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon ass behind him. The surviving four members of the EHPF attack team, one of whom now had a broken shoulder, were just barely clinging on as the green Sonichu zipped from one to the other, dealing out Spin Dashes and flying kicks and Thunder Punches while skillfully avoiding the chus' retaliatory attacks.

"AAAAGH! FUUUUCK! AAAGHHH!"

Whirling back towards the Battle Bus, Kevin watched in horror as Matt jerked backward and clutched his shoulder where a sniper shot from the mercenaries had clipped him deep. Steve grabbed the wounded Jerkop and hauled him away from the door, back to where Jexis was waiting with her surgical kit.

"Son of a…Matt's down!" Zoey called out to Al, her voice hoarse from yelling so much. "HOLY FUCK! JAVELIN! Merc with a Javelin, eight 'o clock moving to nine! NICK! KILL HIM!"

"MIERDA! Stay still, you…" The sniper's voice was cut off by his rifle's sudden report.

"I'm almost through," reported Allie. "Kevin, how you doing?"

"Just get us out of here!" Kevin yelled, and emptied the rest of his clip blindly around the front of the bus. If he'd managed to hit anyone, divine Arceus itself was guiding his bullets.

A Sonichu's limp corpse slammed into the Battle Bus's side armor, leaving a splash of blood across the yellow-painted surface. Looking back, Kevin realized that the green Electric Hedgehog Pokémon had narrowed its EHPF opposition down to two. The other chu lay gasping in the burning ruins, his chest torn open by a Spin Dash. At the moment, the newcomer was grappling with one of the remaining officers while the other Thunderpunched his unprotected back. He seemed to be holding his own, but the Jerkop decided to offer assistance anyway.

The AK-47 cracked thrice as Kevin opened fire, blasting a pair of holes through the second Sonichu's head. Whirling around, the green chu delivered a Thunderpunch of his own to the final EHPF officer, directly beneath the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's chin. With a muffled crunch, the Sonichu's broken body sailed backward, rolling through the debris until it came to a sudden stop against a ruined billboard with STAY STRAIGHT, MAGI-CHAN IS WATCHING printed on its surface around a picture of the aforementioned psychic Chaotic Combo member.

Exhausted and bloodstained, the Sonichu brushed his orange ears back and let out a long sigh of relief. Glancing around to see where the fifth opponent had gone, he noticed Kevin crouching beside the Battle Bus, his AK-47 still pointed toward the chu.

In less than a second, Kevin found himself staring directly at the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's fused eyes from two feet away. It had dashed over so fast that it might as well have teleported.

"Thanks," said the Sonichu, and patted him on the shoulder. "You guys from Slumberland? They said they were sending reinforcements."

"Honey Badgers, Ha-Taque," Al addressed the newcomer dryly. "Menchi-Nasu. And no, we're not here to help you clear the front. We've got orders to escort…"

"Well, I'll tell you what, _Manajerk_," Reldnahc Notsew Naitsirhc retorted as he pressed his medallion and shifted in a flash of white light, revealing himself as a muscular, good-looking young man wearing torn purple pants, a black groin plate, and a series of green straps across his bare chest. "You've just been reassigned. Dad and Robotnik and I are taking out Sonichu, and we're gonna need backup to get out to CWC-Central Park."

"Walsh gave us direct orders to…"

"I don't give a _fuck_ about what Walsh said!" the Team Rocket commander shouted angrily. "She and that scepter of hers fucked us all over, and now we've lost the city! So we're just gonna kill Chandler's champion to even the odds a little. Dad's got a plan to kidnap that dumbass's wife."

"Dad? You mean…Giovanni," Kevin growled. He still hadn't forgotten Viridian Forest. "How?"

"Magicians never reveal their secrets, boy," Reldnahc said condescendingly. He shifted back to his Ha-Taque form, then pushed Allie aside and stepped on the glowing pipe, freeing the Battle Bus instantly. "Now get back in your little Magic School Bus and I'll get you all out of this hellhole." Without another word, he zipped away, leaving a trail of ash and embers in his wake.

"Who the _fuck_ was that?" asked Allie as Kevin helped her to her feet and brushed her off.

"Naitsirhc, son of Giovanni," the Jerkop answered. "_Team Rocket, brighter than light. Surrender now or prepare to fight._ Ring any bells?"

"The Shopping Center…" Allie drew in a sudden gasp. "That was _him_? How did we…"

"No time," growled Al. "Ovid! Change of plans, we're heading west to the suburbs! Get your team back to friendly lines; they'll get you up to Lightning in one piece! Steve, Zoey, Kuri, you three take over the machine guns!"

One by one, the Pickled Ducks gathered their gear and filed out of the Battle Bus, while the two squad leaders and Kuri took their places on the three SAW turrets.

"Thanks for the ride," Tom addressed Al as Diana and Toby helped Allie and Kevin clear away the rest of the debris to free up the bus. "It's not your fault. We'll find our own way, don't worry. Arceus knows, we could use that grey scientist guy more than ever now."

"Grey scientist guy?" Al asked confusedly. "What are you-"

"Ah, never mind." The man extended a hand. "Good hunting, Ledger. And good luck."

"You too, Ovid. Bring McKenzie back alive, and you'll be heroes." Al holstered his M1911 and shook Tom's hand briefly, then dashed back into the Battle Bus to see to the defense. Reldnahc Ha-Taque was holding back the EHPF assault as best as he could, but the Honey Badgers still needed to get out of the kill zone, and fast. While the Pickled Ducks retreated out of sight towards the nearest Jerkop squad, Kevin and Allie finished digging the stuck wheel out in panicked silence. Every second they spent here was another second wasted. For the Honey Badgers, the stakes had now taken on an even higher importance with Reldnahc's arrival.

They had set out to kill Magi-Chan, but now they were going to kill the royal couple themselves.

"We're clear!" yelled Kevin to Al as he and Allie hurried up the steps and into the bus. "Al, we're clear! Is Matt…"

"I'm fine! I'll live!" coughed the injured Jerkop, and waved from the back seat where Jexis was treating his wound. Kuri stood behind them, firing the rear-mounted SAW at any merc or chu foolish enough to try flanking the Battle Bus. Her black hairband bounced up and down on her head with every burst, and the Poké Balls on her belt seemed to be on the verge of popping open.

"Right!" yelled Al, leaping into the driver's seat. "We're moving out! Steve, keep up the fire!"

"That's what we've been doing for the last _ten minutes_, Al!" Steve retorted, just as his machine gun jammed with a horrifying _click_. "Damn it! Nate, get over here and cover me while I-"

"JAVELIN!"

Amanda's scream from was horrifically interrupted as the missile plowed straight into the Battle Bus's left side armor, ripping a massive chunk of metal plating out of the vehicle, reducing the SAW to a smoking wreck, and hurling Steve across the bus and into the opposite wall. The blond Jerkop slid down and curled up on the seat with a moan of pain, his hands bloody and his beard singed. There was no way the explosion hadn't given him some kind of soft tissue damage.

"GODDAMN IT! STEVE!" roared Al. "Jexis, help him! Everyone else, hang on to something!"

Kevin pushed his way back to his seat and reloaded quickly, stealing a full magazine from Zoey as he passed her. The bus was falling apart beneath them, and he wasn't so sure the vehicle could take another Javelin shot. The mercenaries definitely knew that they had done some significant damage, because they were now sending the brunt of their fire directly toward the side of the bus. Behind him, Nick and Amanda dropped down the ladder one by one to reinforce Nate and Zoey at the breach.

Suddenly, the Battle Bus lurched backward, nearly throwing Kevin out of his seat again. For a moment, he thought the mercs had managed to fire off another missile, but was quickly proven wrong when a deafening roar of victory rang through the bus.

"THAT'S IT! WE'RE CLEAR!" the Legend shouted as he wheeled the massive vehicle back around and slammed his foot down on the gas pedal. "Back to your stations! Fire! FIRE!"

"You heard him! Back to your stations!" yelled Zoey. "Kevin, take over on the breach! Allie, here!" She tossed Steve's XM8 across the bus to Allie. "Take Kevin's spot and hold them off!"

"But I've never…"

"I SAID HOLD THEM OFF!"

"YES, MA'AM!" Allie scooted over and jammed her assault rifle through the firing slit as Kevin vaulted the back of their seat and hurried over to Zoey. Steve and Matt lay injured in the back, each bearing several fresh bandages…and numerous wounds. The sight of his friend and his squad leader in such pain was disheartening, to say the least. Interestingly enough, Steve's missing eye had ended up saving his life by absorbing a piece of shrapnel from the explosion. If the patch hadn't been there, the shard would have most likely embedded itself in his brain.

An electronic shriek sounded from the front of the Battle Bus as Al turned on the speaker system. Reldnahc hadn't noticed them leave yet, and the Jerkops needed to let him know they were ready to move. Also, Kevin had a strange feeling that he knew exactly what the Legend had planned for the Honey Badgers' exit strategy.

"_Okay, Reldnahc, now's the time to give us some fucking assistance!" _Al shouted into the receiver, his voice amplified by the loudspeakers embedded in all four corners of the Battle Bus. _"Pull out and cover us! We're on the road and heading west!"_

Immediately, the green Sonichu dashed away from the melee and zoomed right back toward the bus as it rumbled onward through enemy territory. Rifle and SMG rounds pinged and rebounded off its armored exterior, but even with its immense size, the vehicle was still harder to hit on the move than it was when standing still. Kevin was burning through grenades at a maddening rate, firing the launcher at anything blue or yellow he could see. So far, he had exactly two confirmed kills, and he was pretty sure one of the chus had already been dead when he blasted it to pieces.

"_Right,"_ Al continued into the speakers. _"I hate to be cliché, but…let's get this party started."_

Even with the sounds of gunfire blazing in his ears, Kevin could still hear the familiar sound of an audio cassette being pushed into the Battle Bus's tape deck. Al normally made use of Steve's iPod for blasting Slayer or Metallica to pump up the Honey Badgers, but he was also partial to a more old-school approach. And in this case, the song that blared out of the speakers was about as old-school as they came.

_...can best believe that…he's a macho man!_

_Ready to get down with…anyone he can!_

_HEY! HEY! HEY, HEY, HEY!_

_MACHO, MACHO MAN!_

_I've got to be…a macho man!_

_MACHO, MACHO MAN!_

_I've got to be a macho!_

Laughing insanely, Kevin swung his AK-47 to the right and managed to gun down a Sonichu who had stopped to scream and cover his black-tipped ears in extreme insecurity and discomfort. The bullets punched through the chu's body, each one sending up a pink mist where they struck. Most of the mercenary soldiers must have been concentrated at the frontlines, because the hostile fire seemed to be dying down as the Battle Bus rolled through western CWCville, away from the battlefield. Reldnahc led them on, stopping only to attack or kill any EHPF officers who tried to fire Thundershocks into the vehicle.

Eventually, the sounds of battle faded away and were lost in the distance. Al turned off the loudspeakers and ejected his "Greatest Hits of the Village People" cassette, then let out a shaky breath and brought the Battle Bus to a halt in the middle of an intersection.

Kevin collapsed to the floor, his arms numb and his temples throbbing with pain. He was almost certain one of his eardrums had popped, but the pain quickly faded as soon as he closed his eyes.

"Okay," the Legend addressed his Jerkops calmly. "We did it, guys. We made it through."

"The hell's going on in there, Ledger?!" yelled Reldnahc Ha-Taque, tapping his sneakered foot impatiently. "Dad's probably bringing Rosechu to the park right now! Get a move on!"

"GIVE ME A FUCKING SECOND!" Al bellowed at the top of his lungs, silencing the Sonichu immediately. "All right. Zoey, damage report."

"Aye, sir," Zoey replied in a near-perfect imitation of Lieutenant Uhura from _Star Trek_ while she scanned the bus. "Matt's down, Steve's down, we've got a giant hole in our left side, and we lost the left SAW. The roof emplacement's still in one piece, and we're down to two boxes of mixed ammo, four boxes of MG ammo, and half a box of grenades. She'll hold up for another fight, but I don't think she can take another gauntlet like that."

"Agreed." Al turned to Serge. "How many rounds did you go through?"

Serge pulled his minigun back through the window and planted a sloppy kiss directly onto its steaming barrel. "Baba Yaga does not know. Serge does not care. Still enough left for more fun."

"That was _fun_?" scoffed Amanda. "Arceus. You ain't human, you know that, Serge?"

"Dammit." Steve pushed himself up, cradling one of his injured hands with the other. "Al, are we seriously going after Sonichu and Rosechu now? What about Blanca and Silvana? We're supposed to go take out Magi-Chan with them. Reldnahc can get another squad!"

Al sighed. "Look, Steve, I wasn't expecting this. _No one_ was expecting this. But if he's right, then we could save this entire offensive _and_ jumpstart the revolution. We kill Sonichu, and it's all over. We prove to the city that their mayor's greatest 'hero' is still only mortal, just like us." The Legend clenched a fist and pounded the back of his seat. "And then…the uprising begins."

Steve didn't respond, but the look in his eye betrayed the doubt lurking within. Without a sound, he lay down and began batting the unconscious, moaning, explosive-filled Rosey back and forth on the floor like a cat playing with a toy ball.

"Let's _go_!" Reldnahc shouted again. "Or am I gonna have to push you the rest of the way?"

"Cool it, Ha-Taque. We're going." Al stepped on the gas and sent the Battle Bus rolling away again. The green Sonichu zipped ahead to scout out the path, while Kuri kept a close eye on the rear and swiveled her SAW back and forth at the slightest sign of movement.

The burning streets of Get-Tar gradually gave way to the skyscrapers and apartment complexes of the Upper West district, most of which were also on fire after the Crackder bombardment. In the distance, Kevin could hear the booming roar of airstrikes being launched against the shielded Shopping Center, the low _pop-pop-pop_ of faraway S.A.V. autocannons and small explosions. Though the idea of a complete and utter PVCC victory had all but dwindled to a desperate hope, the Jerkops across the city fought on regardless of opposition, fighting and killing and dying by the dozens in a last attempt to end the reign of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon once and for all.

And with luck, the Honey Badgers would soon find themselves at the crossroads of history.

Kevin settled back into his seat beside Allie, weary, dirty, and disoriented. Even if he'd wanted to, he didn't have the strength to take her hand again. All he could do was sit there, and wonder what would happen to them once the war was over. Would they even be alive to see the dawn of an age where the Chaotic Combo no longer ruled the city, where the _Navitaricius_ species no longer forced the humans into poverty and misery, where the EHPF, the Nanny Program, the straight camps, and the tugboat taxes were all destroyed forever?

He didn't know. He just…didn't know.

"Joe," Al spoke quietly into his mask's walkie-talkie. Kevin could barely hear him above the clatter of the bus as it rolled through the bombed-out streets after Reldnahc. "Joe, are you still there? There's been a change of plans…we can't get to Blanca. Repeat, we can't get to the-"

"_GET THAT FUCKING UAV LOCKED ON THEM!"_ Vivian Gee screamed in the background of the transmission, jarring the Legend so much that he almost swerved the Battle Bus into the side of a deserted Burger King. _"MARY! MARY, THEY'RE GOING DOWN!"_

"_Who's going down? What the hell's going on over there?"_ Mary Lee Walsh's voice joined in as the technicians and operators at Menchi-Nasu's control room erupted into a chorus of panicked chatter. _"Gee, someone, anyone, answer me! Where is she? WHERE IS AGENT O'NEIL?"_

* * *

**Upper Central district, near CWCville General Hospital, 1:35 p.m.**

"_ENGINE FIRE ON THE RIGHT WING! GODDAMNIT!"_

"_We're losing the tail fin! I can't keep her airborne! Bail out! Everyone bail out NOW!"_

Ivy toppled to the floor with a scream as the Crackder shuddered and pitched violently to the right, sending anyone who wasn't buckled in tumbling around like rubber balls in the back of a moving pickup truck. Encumbered by their armor, the Jerkop specialists could only curl up and pray to Arceus that the pilots could hold their transport steady long enough for them to get to the parachutes located in the rear of the plane. So far, that wasn't happening.

As per BILLY MAYS's orders, the soldiers and crew on board the manned Transformer had spent the last hour picking up wounded Jerkops from the central battlefront and transporting them over to the closest safe haven, which as of then was Slumberland. Ivy had insisted on staying with the aircraft until it docked in Menchi-Nasu. Her information was for Walsh's eyes, and for Walsh's eyes only. The commander's instructions had been quite clear during her briefing. No one could know she was working with the PVCC. As far as the loyalists knew, Ivy and BILLY MAYS had both been kidnapped by rebel soldiers and were now being held hostage.

Unfortunately, that knowledge meant fuck-all when Angelica Rosechu had appeared out of the blue and sliced open their right engine with a Steel Wing attack.

Ivy didn't know why Angelica hadn't just finished them off in the first place. Maybe the Angel of Death wasn't quite as merciful as she liked her followers to believe. The only upside the PVCC agent could think of at the moment was the white Rosechu's reaction to what had happened at the CWCville Central Church of GodJesus. That place had been Angelica's pride and joy, and as luck would have it, a Jerkop squad had just so happened to blast their way in and slaughter every single Electric Hedgehog Pokémon inside, including over a hundred larvae.

A half-insane grin spread across Ivy's pretty face as she imagined fifty Robbie Sonees and fifty Cera Roseys shrieking and squealing in agony as they were torn apart and butchered like the tiny little pigs they were. She'd had to endure hell with those two spoiled brats and their narcissistic "shiny" sister Christine, but now…no more. She was going to see their executions. Walsh had promised the Miscreants three deaths, three of the most unspeakably excruciating deaths ever bestowed upon a trio of Sonees and Roseys. And if she survived the crash, she would gleefully watch them die, knowing that they now knew what kind of suffering they'd put her through.

"HI, BILLY MAYS HERE!" bellowed BILLY MAYS as he slid across the plane towards her, holding what looked like a backpack. "I'm here to tell YOU about our new and improved surplus Air Force parachute, guaranteed to get ANYONE out of a burning plane and to safety, especially YOU! It's easy! All you do it put your arms in these easily-adjustable straps, fasten the harness, and pull the cord as soon as you're clear of the explosion! But I'm not done yet! If you miss the cord or something goes wrong with your chute, this awesome BACKUP CHUTE automatically activates five seconds after you jump! And we're throwing this all together for_ no extra cost_!

"Okay! Okay!" shouted Ivy, and slipped the parachute on as BILLY helped her buckle in. The bearded salesman's voice may have been as energetic as always, but his face and eyes were nothing short of dead serious. "Where do we get ou-"

_CRUNCH!_

"_WE JUST LOST THE WHOLE RIGHT WING! MENCHI-NASU, WE'RE GOING DOWN! OH SWEET ARCEUS, WE'RE GOING DOWN! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGHHHHHHHH H!"_

"OH GOD!" Ivy screamed as she felt the aircraft begin to spin all around her. Holding on to BILLY MAYS with all her might, she squeezed her eyes shut and began whispering a Hail Mary to herself. For good measure, she threw in a prayer to Arceus. It was all she could do. Whether she and BILLY and the Jerkops survived or not was now firmly in the hands of fate.

_No way out of here,_ Ivy thought to herself. A tear rolled down her cheek. _It'll be dark soon._

Seconds later, the Crackder smashed into the twenty-fifth floor of CWCville General Hospital.

Ivy awoke in darkness, her left leg throbbing with pain and something warm and wet seeping through her hair. As if in a dream, she opened her eyes and looked around, wondering if there had actually even been a crash in the first place. Granted, she knew _something_ had gone wrong, but she couldn't remember _what_. Air, something about the air, and a duffel bag full of…stuff…

"HURGH!" Pulling herself up, she immediately turned away and vomited, choking and heaving until her stomach was empty. Something didn't feel right. The last drops of saliva seemed to be falling _sideways_, parallel to the floor. An invisible force was pulling her down toward the front of the plane. Only when she spat in her hand and held it out did she realize the truth.

The Crackder was vertically embedded in the building…in an elevator shaft, to be precise.

Ivy nearly threw up again. Her eyes were adjusting to the darkness, but she could barely make out a piece of twisted metal that had caught her leg as she slid. She was now suspended by this very same piece of steel, this inanimate savior. But where was BILLY? Where were the Jerkops that had been on the plane with her? Looking around, Ivy could only see a cramped space full of sparks, fire, metal, and glass. The front of the Transformer had been completely torn off and fell down the shaft, leaving the chassis and tail stuck inside the elevator. But there was something else, lodged between the seats…a soft, cylindrical container that looked as if it were made of…

The duffel bag! There it was! Ivy sighed in relief as she reached for her precious cargo, wrapping her other leg around the metal spur to give herself more room for movement. It took a few tries, but she finally managed to swing her body over to the seats and grab on. Now for the hard part. With a grunt of exertion, the PVCC agent released her feet from the spur and held on tight to the back of the seat. Hand over hand, she pulled herself up to each new ledge, toward the duffel bag. Luckily, the Crackder wasn't hanging at an exact 90 degree angle to the ground, so she had enough of a difference in gravity to make the climb that much easier. Just one more pull, and…

"Gotcha!" Ivy coughed, and grabbed the duffel bag with one hand. Slinging it over her shoulder, she stole a look down toward the black pit below and pondered her next move.

"HI, BILLY MAYS HERE!"

Ivy sighed. She would be okay. BILLY MAYS was still alive, and he wouldn't leave her to die.

"BILLY!" she called out, looking around for the source of her fellow agent's voice. "BILLY, where are you? I'm still in the plane! Can you hear me?"

"Are you tired of being stuck in elevator shafts?" BILLY asked. "Do you have trouble coping with stressful situations? Did you just survive a plane crash? Well, have I got something for you! If you just look down, you'll see a brand new steel elevator cable hanging outside the plane!"

Ivy complied. The cable was there, swinging back and forth beside the large hole in the Crackder's chassis. It looked easy enough to grab. And standing just a few yards below it was…

"BILLY!" she cried out in relief. "Are you okay? Did anyone else survive?"

"BILLY MAYS here!" confirmed BILLY, waving to her from the twenty-third floor. Behind him, she could see two Jerkops standing guard in the hallway, while further away, the sounds of gunfire, electric zaps, and screaming Sonees and Roseys filled the hospital. The plane must have split apart and dropped the survivors two levels down, fortunately depositing them right through the middle of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon maternity ward. Ivy felt a cruel grin spread across her face as a high-pitched "WOSEEEEEEEEEY!" rang out close by. BILLY politely waved and stepped aside to let one of the Jerkops hurl a squirming, skirtless pink fuzzball through the open door and into the abyss. Five seconds later, the newly hatched Rosey's screams abruptly stopped.

"Okay, I'm gonna jump and climb down!" Ivy yelled. "Here! Catch!" She heaved the duffel bag out toward BILLY, who just barely managed to grab hold of it and avoid joining the Rosey.

"Now wait, there's more!" the former salesman announced. "Since we just added the new and improved Jerkop Slaughter to this building, the EHPF are coming to rescue us and zap our friends to the extreme! We just have to distract the chus while the operatives take the stairs!"

"Sounds like a plan!" Gritting her teeth, the young woman tensed her body for the most important leap of faith she would ever make. "I'm going for it! Wish me luck! BANZAI!"

Ivy let go. Her shoes skidded against the steel floor as she slid towards the edge of the plane, but she was able to steer herself right toward the cable. She only had one shot at this…one shot…

_Clunk!_

There was no time to think, no time to recalibrate her jump. Ivy's foot slammed into another metal spur, just like the one that had saved her life before. She toppled out into empty space, gasping and struggling as the thick steel cable swung forward to meet her. Before she knew it, she had stopped falling…but not by grabbing the cable.

"HHHHHHRRRRRRRHHHHHHHH!" Ivy spluttered as the cold metal twisted around her windpipe. Her throat was being crushed. She could feel the sharp strands of steel pushing, grinding against her esophagus while blood thundered in her eyes and ears. It felt like drowning, just without the water. Fighting for breath, she grappled with the unyielding cable, but it refused to give. Her vision was going darker…darker…gone.

Two floors down, BILLY MAYS let out a scream of anguish as Ivy O'Neil's body shuddered and hung limp and lifeless from the cable that had strangled her. The same thing he had meant to save her life with had ended up taking it instead. He'd failed. He'd failed to save the one thing he had been assigned to bring back in one piece, and it was all because of his…

"Sir!" shouted a panicked female Jerkop as she dashed around the corner of the hospital corridor, her hair prickling up with static. "Sir, they got Nelson and Barnes! We can't h-AAAAGGHHH!" She collapsed to the ground, dead, still twitching from the intense Thundershock that had caught her in the back. BILLY froze, his heart pounding in his chest. The two remaining Jerkops looked at his expectantly, but he had no answers for them. Only cold, hopeless fear remained.

"Y'all can't escape now!" a Sonichu called out, its nasal voice trembling victoriously. "Give yourselves up and we won't zap you to the extreme!"

"Do it," BILLY whispered, overcoming his natural urge to shout the instructions. "I'll get you out. It's easy. Just pretend that you were keeping me prisoner, and everything will be okay."

"I hope you know what you're doing, BILLY," snarled the Manajerk.

"Well well well!" boasted the EHPF sergeant as he and four more Sonichus rounded the corner to find the PVCC agent and the two Jerkops standing by the elevator shaft with their hands in the air. "So, you dang JERKS were plotting to kidnap the Mayor's friend, BILLY MAYS! Guess you failed to count on us coming to save the day!" He winked at BILLY. "You do not have to worry now, Mr. MAYS; we have this all under control. Now hurry back to the Shopping Center; Magi-Chan says that the Autobots will be ready to help us beat back those dirty trolls and save the city of CWCville from their slander!"

"I'd love to, Sergeant!" BILLY exclaimed, forcing himself back into his "sales pitch" persona the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon knew and loved so well. "Hi, BILLY MAYS here, and I want to thank YOU for saving me from those awful, awful kidnappers! Make sure they're locked up for good! I recommend B Block in the CWCville Penitentiary!"

"What a great idea!" exclaimed the uniformed Sonichu. "Thanks, Mr. MAYS!"

"You're welcome!" laughed BILLY. It was the most painful laugh he'd ever had to conjure in his life. "Now I'm off to help…SAVE THE DAY!"

On his way down the stairs of CWCville General Hospital, while the piteous screams of grieving Rosechu parents and the distant thunder of the citywide battle sounded through the building, all that BILLY MAYS could think of was Ivy's horrified face, locked in that sickening contortion as she'd choked to death right in front of him. All her time undercover, her life among the chus and Chandler…she'd put everything on the line. He'd comforted her after she posed for the mayor's infamous wedding and honeymoon comics, after Chandler had declared that God and Jesus had meant for them to be together as Sweethearts from the Ground-Up, after she'd had her brain psychically violated by Chandler from the Time Void, after every city meeting, every Sunday spent at Angelica's church, every "pwaydate" with the three horrible Sonichu children…

Clutching the duffel bag to his chest, BILLY MAYS slumped against the wall and sobbed. It had all been for nothing, Ivy's sacrifice had achieved nothing, and he had done nothing to save her.

Then and there, before the eyes of mighty Arceus, he made her a promise…a vow for vengeance.

And by ensuring that the contents of Ivy's duffel bag found their way to Menchi-Nasu, the embers of his vengeance would soon be stoked into flame. He would make sure that CWCville forever remembered the name of Ivy O'Neil, and the revolution that she had died to ignite.

BILLY MAYS had a plan, and it was easy. All that was left was for him to set it in motion.

* * *

**Northwest CWCville, Lightning district, Penny Lane apartments, 2:08 p.m.**

_Fire._

Shielding her face against the approaching flames with one hand, Sarah Cassandra McKenzie slammed against the door again and again in a futile attempt to break free, while her panda-ear headband bounced up and down with each frenzied strike. Panic raced through her – the kind of panic only those who find themselves in a situation with no way out could possibly feel.

Desperate to escape, the Australian girl drew her pistol and fired two shots into the lock. The wood cracked, but no matter how hard she kicked the splintered mess, it wouldn't budge. Only more fire lay on the other side. Since Chandler had had the sprinkler systems for all chu-friendly buildings removed across the city to decrease the chances of any Electric Hedgehog Pokémon shocking themselves, her apartment and the entire Penny Lane complex would soon be engulfed in flames. The only way out she could see was through the window, and that meant a five-story drop straight down into the sidewalk. She couldn't survive that. But maybe, just maybe…

"AUGHH!" the PVCC agent cried out as a burning plank collapsed from the ceiling and struck her on the shoulder. Clenching her teeth against the pain, she hobbled over to her bedroom and slammed the door shut, just before the living room was consumed by a hungry surge of flames. There wasn't much time. She had to let Menchi-Nasu know what had happened.

The entire building had been set alight by a damaged S.A.V. that had careened out of control after Magi-Chan Sonichu had hurled half of a Punislav at it in the midst of fending off a Jerkop squad a few blocks south of the Penny Lane apartments. The EHPF were too busy helping their fearless leaders push back the rebel advance, so saving one of the Mayor's gal-pals had suddenly been pushed down to "workin' on it" status. Of course, that excuse didn't help her one bit. Now she was one of the few survivors trapped within the blazing structure, thanks to the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon and their complete disregard for the safety of CWCville's human citizens.

Grabbing her emergency radio from the dresser next to Bob and Chloe's S-Chu Balls, Sarah hurriedly switched it to a secure frequency and punched the orange DISTRESS button over and over again. The response, thankfully, was immediate.

"_Agent McKenzie!"_ Mary Lee Walsh sounded unbelievably relieved, but the utter urgency in her voice was clear._ "We just saw Penny Lane go up in flames! Are you hurt? What's your status?"_

"I can't get out!" yelled Sarah, collecting the S-Chu Balls into her arms as hungry flames began licking at the carpet of her bedroom. "The dang door won't open!"

"_We've got an extraction team on the way! Stay there! We'll get you out! Don't worry!"_

The smoke was billowing through now, drowning out Walsh's words in a choking black cloud. Sarah coughed again and again, her eyes filling with tears as she stared at her precious comrades.

"I…I must save…my…Pokémon…" she choked, and dropped the radio onto her bed.

"_Agent McKenzie? AGENT MCKENZIE! SARAH! SARAH, WHAT ARE YOU-"_

Light-headed and weak from smoke inhalation, Sarah wobbled her way to the window and somehow managed to force it open. The momentary breath of fresh air was quickly smothered by escaping smoke, along with a wall of heat from behind her that nearly scorched her hair off. The door was burning, and soon, she would too. But Bob and Chloe…she could still save them.

_For Team PandaHalo,_ she thought to herself as she hurled the S-Chu Balls out the open window.

* * *

**West CWCville, subdivisions, CWC-Central Park, 2:10 p.m.**

Even if the PVCC was technically losing the battle for CWCville, Kevin would never have been able to tell from the state of CWC-Central Park. As the Battle Bus slowly followed Reldnahc down the winding dirt road and across the fields littered with craters, splintered and burning trees, and piles of dead Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, the Honey Badgers looked on with awe at each new leftover from the merciless slaughter that had taken place across the past two hours.

There was no question about it – what Marcus Bagget and the Jerkop teams in his platoon had done to the subdivisions was nothing short of absolute carnage on the level of Genghis Khan. With the EHPF focused on defending the ten-mile stretch of urban CWCville against the main PVCC invasion, the Jerkop high commander had seized the opportunity to bring the fight behind enemy lines, thus coordinating both the assault on the Shopping Center and the massacre at CWC-Central Park. And while the former had dwindled into a stalemate, the latter was most likely destined to go down in history as the single greatest blow against the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon species since the Soup Hotel exterminations of 2004.

"Goddamn," Al muttered in admiration. "Almost makes you think that we were winning this."

"It's not over yet," replied Zoey, staring at something up ahead. "Look, there they are."

The bus slowed to a halt, its engine hissing as it stopped in front of the assembly zone. Al turned off the engine and stood up, then made his way down the steps and out into the park. Zoey and Steve followed him, then the rest of the Honey Badgers, even Matt. By now, both he and Steve had stopped bleeding, though their injuries still weren't anywhere close to being healed.

"Okay, then," Al addressed his Jerkops when they had all disembarked. "You know what we're going to try and do here. You know what we're about to face, and how we'll do it. _We're going to kill Sonichu and Rosechu_." He grinned. "After we're done here, we're gonna pay a visit to 14 Brunchville Lane and have some fun with their little babies. I figure we earned _that_ much today."

Steve made a motion as if to respond, but remained silent. Kevin could tell that something was bothering the squad leader, but he didn't have an idea as to what that something could have been.

"Well well." Zoey grinned and pointed to a mech-form Punislav standing in the middle of what could only be the staging ground for this new trap. Giovanni and Dr. Ivo Robotnik stood beside it, conversing with Marcus Bagget and Reldnahc, who had changed back into human form. And firmly clutched in the brown Transformer's right hand was none other than…

"Rosechu," Kevin growled as a surge of memories flooded through him. It was as if he was back in Viridian all over again, escaping the bus after Team Rocket had attacked, wandering through the dark forest with Max and Julie, and finally encountering the pink-furred beast that now hung helpless and screaming before him. Back then, he had been naïve and shortsighted. He would never have guessed that Kel's new friend and her sweetbolt would one day enslave CWCville, ruin his life, and spawn such horrid offspring as Cera Rosey, Christine Rosey, and Robbie Sonee.

Matt patted him on the shoulder. "Easy, Kevin. All good things, you know?"

"Yeah, yeah." Kevin pushed his friend's hand away and stepped forward, crossing the field toward the three administrators, the Jerkop commander, and their prisoner. Taken by surprise, Al and Steve quickly hurried after him, then the rest of the Honey Badgers as well.

"…if I were you, I'd just gut the squealing bitch right now," Bagget growled, and glared up at Rosechu. "Trap or no trap, I can't keep my men here. Iseli needs help to take down the Shopping Center, and from what I've been hearing, it's not looking too good for them at all."

"It's our best chance, Marcus," retorted Giovanni, gritting his teeth in frustration. "Look, we've already got his wife. He's on the way out here. All we do is pull the trigger, and this whole damn war comes to an end. I've got operatives dying out there too, Marcus. You think I-"

"My sweetbolt will rescue me, you dirty trolls!" shrieked Rosechu dramatically, interrupting the Team Rocket commander. "Let me go right this minute! I'll make you pay for your slanderous-"

Giovanni sighed. "Ivo? Put her out. She needs her beauty sleep."

"Rrrrrright you are, Giovanni!" snapped Robotnik, and drew a small pistol from his belt. "Sweet dreams, Rrrrrrosechu!" Whirling around, he took aim at Rosechu and fired, sending a tiny dart into her neck. The struggling pink chu immediately froze and slumped over, unconscious.

"Much better." Bagget looked up to see Kevin and the Honey Badgers approaching. "Well well. Reinforcements. These yours, Nait?"

"Yeah, I found them over at the frontlines in Get-Tar," explained Reldnahc. "They drove right through the barricade with a fucking school _bus_. I don't know if they even _meant_ to do that or not."

"Commander Bagget!" Al saluted sharply. "Honey Badgers, reporting for duty."

"Nicely done, Ledger." The Jerkop commander returned the salute. "You might not know this, but I just got a report in from Get-Tar. Apparently that stunt you pulled broke the stalemate and let those squads push past the barricade. They're attacking one of the loyalist safe zones as we speak. A whole lot of chus are dead now because of what your operatives did. Congratulations."

"Uh…thank you, sir." The Legend looked genuinely surprised at this news. "We did what we could with Reldnahc's assistance, given our situation. Do you have new orders for us, sir?"

"As a matter of fact, I do," replied Bagget. "You'll take my Bastards' place while I help Wes with the offensive up north. After Sonichu's dead, rendezvous with my troops in the Shopping Center parking lot – we're going to set up our newest HQ right over their home fucking base."

"Sounds like a plan, sir," said Al with a grim smile.

"Then I'll leave you gentlemen to it," the commander finished, glancing from Giovanni to Reldnahc to Robotnik. His eyes held the steely gleam of determination, even in the face of such brutally insurmountable odds. "Do it, and you'll never pay for another drink as long as you live."

"Get a load of _this_!" chuckled Robotnik. "We'll rrrrrremember to hold you to that, Marcus!"

"And I'll remember to hold you to yours," Bagget muttered as a trail of dust appeared at the entrance to CWC-Central Park and began speeding towards them. "Right, I'm out of here. Do it quickly." Without another word, he turned and walked toward a Punislav of his own, accompanied by the ten elite Jerkops that formed his personal guard – Bagget's Bastards.

"That's it! That's him! You! Jerkops! Set up in the bushes behind us," ordered Giovanni to the Honey Badgers. "And don't open fire until I say so! Ivo, Nait, get ready!"

"All set here, Dad!" yelled Reldnahc. Robotnik merely nodded and stepped over to join his comrades while Al, Steve, and the rest of the Honey Badgers hurried to set up a hasty firing line before Sonichu's arrival. Kevin drew a final grenade from his belt and slid it into the launcher on his AK-47. It all came down to this. One last battle, one final kill…and the city would fall.

"You psyched, little bro?" asked Nate, his voice trembling with anticipation as adjusted the dead Sonee impaled on the muzzle of his Barrett. "You've been waiting, what…_ten years_ for this?"

"Six, if you count the time warp," Kevin corrected him. "Still feels like half a lifetime ago. We'll go home and see Mom and Dad and Lucy after all this shit's over and done with, okay?"

"Hell _yes_." Nate flipped up the rifle's bipod and lay down for a steadier shot. "Nick, any tips?"

"Go for the legs," the sniper muttered. "Kneecap him, and he won't be able to dodge so easily."

"I'd like to see him escape one of _these_," snorted Amanda. She had stuffed the Baby Boomer Rosey into her backpack for safekeeping, and was now eagerly spinning the cylinders of her grenade launcher around and around. "They're gonna be pickin' yellow hairs out of the grass for decades after we're through with that Electric Hedgehog cocksucker."

"Steady, everyone." Al's voice was grim, focused, the voice of the soldier he had once been. "This is it. This is the day we make history. Honey Badgers, lock and load."

In the bushes, each of the Jerkops raised his or her weapon, lining up their shots directly at the yellow blur just as it slowed to a halt right in front of Giovanni, Robotnik, Reldnahc, and the Punislav holding Rosechu. A bead of sweat dripped down Kevin's cheek. _Time to die, Sonichu._

"Giovanni! Robotnik!" Sonichu shouted, snapping out of his dash and into a combat stance. "Where is Rosechu?!" He looked up and gasped as he noticed his wife hanging limp and unconscious in the Transformer's grip. "Rosey! Rosey! What have you done to her?!"

"No worries, Sonichu," chuckled Giovanni, smirking at the yellow Electric Hedgehog Pokémon and clasping his hands behind his back. "She is safe…for now…depending on your cooperation. And I suggest you keep your distance, withhold your attacks, and make no attempt to rescue her before I finish my say…" He glanced over his shoulder, toward the line of bushes where the Honey Badgers lay in wait. "…or she will die."

"Alright, I'm listening." Sonichu crossed his arms in frustration. "Speak your evil, coward."

"Very well." Giovanni took a step forward. "I want you to pledge your loyalty and obedience to my son, Reldnahc, and make him mayor of CWCville."

"What?!" Sonichu exclaimed in disbelief. "Hells no!"

"I implore you to think it over," sneered the Team Rocket commander. He raised his hand to signal the Jerkops. "What's more important to you? Your city, or your sweetheart wife?"

_WHAM!_

Kevin's mouth fell open in disbelief as Giovanni was knocked flat on his back by a spinning orange object that rebounded off of his face and whacked the Punislav on its arm and head with a truly ludicrous amount of force. Another rebound smacked into Robotnik and Reldnahc, sending both of them tumbling to the grass, stunned. The machine's hand and head fell free of its chassis, the former still gripping its captive as the stump sparked with electricity. Sonichu dashed over and caught Rosechu before she hit the ground, then pried her out of the crushing metal fingers.

"No!" Kuri hissed as the basketball's thrower dashed into view, accompanied by a purple Sonichu in a cloak. _"Al! What do we do?"_

"Stand down." The Legend raised a hand. "Stand down. The situation's been compromised."

"Fucking hell," whispered Steve. "They knew this was a trap. Arceus, we're all fucked now."

"Rosechu! Wake up!" Sonichu pleaded as he knelt by his wife. "Come on, sweetie! Wake up!"

Kevin silently prayed that the Punislav had crushed Rosechu before dropping her, but his hopes were instantly crushed when the pink Electric Hedgehog Pokémon sat up and opened her eyes.

"Uhhh… Sonichu?" Rosechu asked dazedly, looking around. "Where are we?"

"Oh! Thank God!" Sonichu embraced her tightly, nearly weeping with joy. "You fainted while that Punislav had you in its clutches; I chased after with a couple of minor interruptions."

"Come on, I can take 'em out now," Amanda growled. "Al, damn you, let me take this shot."

"I'm not going to let you put this entire squad in danger," the Legend replied. "That's Darkbind Sonichu and Bionic the Hedgehog out there. We can't go up against both. Amanda, _stand down_."

"Arceus!" snarled the Jerkop, and shouldered her grenade launcher. "Fuck you, Al. Fuck you."

"We are at CWC-Central Park," Sonichu continued as he hugged his wife. "Giovanni wanted to blackmail your safety and well-being for rule over CWCville; I almost gave in, but then someone cut off the hand of the robot that was holding you; I rushed to catch it and rescue you. Oh, sweetheart! Thank God you are safe!"

"Oh…thank you so much, honey-bolt," Rosechu slurred. She was still woozy from Robotnik's sleeping drug. "Who cut off that robot hand?"

"That would be us," Darkbind announced as he and Bionic made their way over to the lovehogs.

"Bionic and Darkbind; what's going on with y'all?" asked Sonichu in bewilderment.

"I was leveling-up with expierence by practicing my swordsmanship on some goblins and demon," explained the purple sword-wielding Sonichu, "when I heard the chaos caused by the giant robots, and I blazed a trail through some of the Jerkops and robots. I ended up here as well, saw you two in danger, and teamed-up with Bionic to help you two out."

"You see now?" Al muttered. "We shoot, and they'll kill us all."

"Well, I was shootin' some hoops with my homies at the court on 5th and Char St., when the Jerkops came and interrupted our high-5s," Bionic added. "So we split up and K-Oed some of them with our slam-dunkin' strength. I ended up here at the park where I saw you and Rosechu in trouble, then I found Darkbind nearby; we teamed-up and helped y'all out."

"Well, Rosey and I, we are grateful," replied Sonichu.

A loud gasp alerted Kevin and the other Honey Badgers to where Reldnahc had managed to pick himself off the ground. The teenager's eyes blazed with hatred as he glanced at the stunned bodies of his father and Dr. Robotnik, as well as the severed head of the Punislav transport.

"YOU!" he shouted, gazing at Bionic and grabbing a Poké Ball from his belt. Before the hedgehog could react, Reldnahc had hurled the red and white sphere directly at him, whacking him right in the face and knocking the spinning basketball out of his hand.

"OW!" yelled Bionic, but was quickly silenced by a thunderous roar as a fully-grown, savage Nidoking exploded from the Poké Ball and towered over him. "Aw, dang!"

"This is for that whack in my head back at the high school, Bionic the Hedgehog!" yelled Reldnahc. "NIDOKING! TAKE DOWN!"

The colossal purple armored Pokémon let out another roar and charged its opponent, slamming into the surprised Bionic at full force. The orange hedgehog flung out his arms to absorb the blow, but was forced backwards nonetheless, his feet plowing up two furrows of earth as they skidded across the ground. Sweat dripped from his headspikes from the sheer effort of holding his foe back, and for one hopeful second, it seemed as though the Nidoking would smash him against a nearby tree. Indeed, he was now fighting for his very life, pushing with his feet against the trunk as the Pokémon snarled and advanced, slowly crushing Bionic's resistance…

_SPLAT!_

The Nidoking staggered backward, pawing at its eyes where a thick glob of mud had splattered it across its face. Blind and disoriented, it stomped around in a frenzy, desperately searching for the hedgehog as Bionic pulled himself to his feet. Across the field, Sonichu stood grinning smugly, his shoe still dirty from sending the Mud Slap to help his ally.

"You bastard! You cheating bastard!" Kuri growled, her voice shaking with hatred.

Al remained infuriatingly silent. Kevin couldn't read his mind, but he had a suspicion that the Legend was feeling just as utterly confused and helpless as he was at the moment. The chus and Bionic had Reldnahc outnumbered and outgunned, now that the Honey Badgers weren't allowed to intervene. It would have been useless for them to try and take out three true Sonichus, one Rosechu, and - whatever the hell species Bionic was - by themselves, but part of Kevin still wanted to storm in there and at least try to take out the original Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

"ARGH! Nidoking! What the fuck is wrong with you?!" yelled Reldnahc as the armored Pokémon finally managed to shake the mud out of its eyes. Looking around, it roared again and centered its attention on Bionic once more, who was currently receiving incredibly detailed and anticlimactic instructions from Darkbind Sonichu on how exactly the Mud Slap had worked.

"Just to let you know, Bionic," the purple chu explained, "Nidoking is a Poision-type, and he is weakest against Psychic and Ground-type attacks; Mud-Slap is a Ground-type attack."

Kevin couldn't believe what he was hearing. Was this how the chus fought every one of their battles? With Magi-Chan or someone else telling them exactly how to beat their opponents? The importance of destroying the purple psychic Electric Hedgehog Pokémon was more clear than ever to him now. No wonder the PVCC had been so soundly beaten – if all of the Chaotic Combo were receiving their instructions from one source…

"Awesome. Thanks, Sonichu," said Bionic. "Now, y'all watch me work my globetrottin' magic."

Narrowing his fused eyes in determination, the orange hedgehog dashed forward and raised a sneakered foot to land his first blow - a crushing kick to the Nidoking's lower torso…

_CLUNK!_

"AAAAAAGH!" screamed Bionic as his pathetic attack simply bounced off the hard plates of his opponent's belly armor, leaving him with nothing more than a sprained ankle. The Nidoking merely shook itself and roared, then stomped forward and delivered a kick of its own to the screaming hedgehog. With a meaty thud, Bionic sailed backward into a tree and slid down, gasping and wheezing as the wind was knocked clean out of him.

Kevin blinked in surprise. He hadn't been expecting _that_.

"Ugh…uhhhhhh…" Bionic dragged himself upright and limped back toward the Nidoking, then raised his fist and leapt straight up in an attempt at a heroic uppercut right under the Pokémon's chin. Growling, the colossal armored creature whipped its horned head to the side, then smashed the airborne recolor away as if Bionic had been a mere baseball. The orange hedgehog tumbled head over heels across the grass, gasping in immense pain while Reldnahc roared with laughter.

"Pitiful," Steve chuckled under his breath. "Maybe this whole clusterfuck wasn't a total loss."

"Quiet," hissed Zoey.

Dazed and covered in grass and mud, Bionic tried to regain his footing again, but stumbled and fell forward. The Nidoking nudged him with its foot, grunted in revulsion, then raised a clawed hand to finish the downed hedgehog once and for all.

"SO-NI-CHUUUUUUU!"

A bolt of lightning seared through the Nidoking's body with a flash of sparks and a thunderous crackle, fully electrocuting the massive beast. Its strength sapped, the armored Pokémon let out a last roar and fainted, crashing forward onto the ground less than two feet from where Bionic was weakly attempting to push himself up out of the grass. Gritting his teeth in helpless anger, Kevin glanced back to Sonichu, who had intervened just in the nick of time to save his pathetic friend.

"Damn it, hedgehog!" roared Reldnahc as he popped open a Poké Ball and retrieved the fallen Nidoking. "I will have my revenge!" Staring disdainfully down at the struggling Bionic, he raised a hand and conjured what seemed to be a pulsating ball of purple energy.

The hairs on Kevin's arms began to prickle up again. He and the rest of the Honey Badger knew that the real Naitsirhc had been a daemonhost for Reldnahc since the PVCC had used the Dark Mirror to trap Crystal Chandler, but his memories of the squad's nightmare journey through the Warp were just as clear as they'd been the day after they'd escaped. Whatever the daemon of Slaanesh was going to do, he had a feeling that it wouldn't end well for Bionic.

"_Quee…fee…mae…mo…bo-bo,"_ muttered Reldnahc, and hurled the ball of energy straight at the struggling orange hedgehog. "Let's see Chandler retcon _this_, you wretched recolor!"

_FRRRRRPPPPP!_ Bionic shuddered and collapsed again, spasming as his bowels and bladder released of their own accord. Darkbind, Sonichu, and Rosechu all stared in disbelief as they watched their comrade suffer from one of the most insanely violent cases of explosive diarrhea in history. Reldnahc smirked victoriously, then glanced behind him. In the confusion, both Giovanni and Robotnik had managed to sneak away to the doctor's personal hovercraft transport.

"_Much appreciated, mortal scum,"_ the Slaaneshi daemon hissed in a voice from beyond his human host's dimension. _"Farewell for now. Send a more worthy opponent next time."_ A bright flash of purple light seared across the park, and Reldnahc vanished into thin air.

"We'll get you back for this!" yelled Giovanni as Robotnik's transport lifted up and shot away toward the city. Kevin heard Al curse under his breath. It took him a moment to realize the awful truth – the Honey Badgers had been abandoned in the heart of enemy territory. The Battle Bus was still parked on the grass, and it had only been due to sheer luck that the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon hadn't yet noticed it.

"Al," Steve whispered. "Al, we need to get back to the bus."

"Just hold on," the Manajerk replied. "Wait for them to get out of…oh, fucking hell."

"Ha! Those JERKS could not stand up to us!" boasted Sonichu as he grabbed Bionic's hand and helped the befouled and incredibly embarrassed hedgehog to his feet. "It was a hard battle, but we won; Giovanni and Robotnik and Naitsirhc were forced to retreat." He made no mention of the curse of embarrassment, nor seemed to even notice the stench of raw feces. Most likely, Sonichu's sense of smell had been toughened up by intense exposure to the mayor's office.

"Uh…thanks, Sonichu," mumbled Bionic, still trembling from his horrible beating. "We should get back to the…we should go help out at the…_Megagi?_"

"L! A! N! C! E! R! S!" chanted Megagi La Skunk as she hurried across the park toward Bionic, clad in a Manchester High Lancers cheerleader outfit and holding two pom-poms. "Let's go, Lancers, let's go! YAY! BIONIC!" Evidently, Magi-Chan had only told her a fraction of what her sweetheart had actually done in the battle with Reldnahc. Bionic, however, seemed satisfied.

"Rosey, we gotta go!" Sonichu stated, turning to his wife.

"Okay, honey-bolt," replied Rosechu. She climbed up onto Sonichu's shoulders and grabbed hold of his ears, as if riding a furry, spiky bicycle. Kevin couldn't understand why Sonichu's headspikes didn't mutilate and impale her, but he was fairly certain that Chandler had come up with some stupid and overly informative explanation for such a minor detail of chu physiology.

The lovehogs dashed off, accompanied by Darkbind. Bionic and Megagi remained behind, celebrating together while the Honey Badgers waited and watched in anticipation.

"What a battle!" exclaimed Megagi as soon as she'd finished her idiotic cheerleader routine. "And you fought like a champion, darling; Magi-Chan told me everything! I loved the way you grabbed that dark energy curse and spun it right back at Reldnahc, just like a real Harlem Globetrotter! That was amazing!" She sniffed the air. "What is that smell?"

"Uh…Reldnahc ended up with some dirty, crapped briefs after he was afflicted by his own curse of embarrassment," Bionic explained hastily. "But anyway, it does not matter; it is all over, and we won! Now we should get back to the Shopping Center and help Sonichu and Rosechu with-"

_Thunk! BOOM!_

"AAAAAAGGGGHHHHH!" Megagi was hurled backward as the ground beneath her feet exploded, sending up a spray of grassy dirt and a few chunks of rock. Bionic darted out of the way, leaving his sweetheart to crash back to earth with a shredded leg and a broken hip.

"NOT SO TOUGH NOW, ARE YOU, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS!" Amanda shouted as she stepped out of the bushes and advanced on the injured, screaming skunk. There was a loud click as she cycled her grenade launcher, preparing a fresh high explosive round to fire. "Come here!"

"GODDAMMIT, AMANDA!" roared Al, and hurled himself after her with his M4 raised to fire. Steve, Zoey, Kevin, and the rest of the Honey Badgers rushed out to join their squadmates, keeping their weapons trained on Bionic as they assembled on the field.

"MEGAGI!" screamed the orange hedgehog. "MEGAGI, WHAT IS GOING ON?"

"I'll tell you what's goin' on, you little orange bastard!" Amanda yelled, and brought a heavy boot down on Megagi's broken leg. The skunk let out a piercing shriek, but a vicious blow from the grenade launcher's stock quickly shattered her nose and part of her jaw. "SHUT UP, BITCH! Here's what's goin' on, hedgehog! You're gonna watch your sweetheart die, and then Kuri's gonna take you apart piece by piece. Ain't that right, Smurfette?"

Kuri raised her tekko-kagi and licked the blades. The look in her eyes was more than enough.

"Amanda, _calm down_," Al ordered, raising his hand. "We've got them both here. If we took them hostage, we could negotiate for some of the Jerkop prisoners in-"

_CRUNCH!_ Amanda smashed Megagi in the shoulder, breaking her arm and prompting another scream of pain. Bionic let out a cry of anguish at his girlfriend's suffering, but dared not advance on the Jerkops or even try to defend the genetically altered Stunky.

"AMANDA!" yelled Zoey. "For fuck's sake, stop it!"

"No," muttered Steve. "Let her do it. See how they like getting fucked over."

"Son of a bitch. Amanda, stand down!" ordered Al, and fired a shot into the air.

"Or what, Al?" The Jerkop glanced over her shoulder disdainfully. Her face was spattered with Megagi's blood. "Or what? You gonna _defend_ her?"

The Legend didn't respond. It was anyone's guess as to what was going on behind his welder's mask.

"We don't have much time," Zoey spoke up. "They probably contacted Magi-Chan already. We're gonna have mercs swarming this place in no time. The Shopping Center's lost – you know that! Not even Bagget's going to be able to stop them if they know we've got two of th-"

"My apologies," a sinister voice sneered from above. "I'm afraid you no longer have _any_ time."

Whirling around, Kevin nearly suffered a heart attack as Magi-Chan Sonichu himself touched down on the grass, his baleful yellow eyes glowing with psychic energy. As each of the Honey Badgers looked back and realized what had happened, a wave of helpless despair swept through the squad, like icy water rushing across bare skin. There was no way out now.

"Thank GodJesus!" Megagi choked through a mouthful of her own blood.

"Oh, Arceus," breathed Steve. "Fuck me."

"Weapons up," Al snarled. "Focus on him. Everyone focus on him."

"Join the defense of the Shopping Center, Bionic," ordered the purple Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. "Your…_assistance_…is no longer required here. I will deal with these nuisances."

Bionic gulped, looked from Magi-Chan to the injured Megagi, then turned and dashed off, leaving the Honey Badgers alone with their captive and the Chaotic Combo member. Kevin kept his AK-47 trained on the Sonichu, stealing occasional glances at Allie, Nate, and Amanda, who was keeping the skunk pinned against the ground with her boot.

"Don't move, Magi-Chan," Al ordered, and nodded to Steve. The blond Jerkop drew Origin and knelt beside Megagi, then pressed the barrel to her head as she whimpered and sobbed in fear.

Magi-Chan sighed. "And what makes you think that this gives you the right to bargain with me?"

"The fact that you'll have to explain to Chandler why you let his first creation's sweetheart get her head blown open," retorted Steve. "Assuming he _ever_ comes back. Now _back off_."

"I don't think so." The purple Sonichu raised a hand and pointed at Al. "Let me tell you what's going to happen, Mr. Ledger. You and your friends are going to drop your weapons immediately. After that, I will give you to Bubbles. No matter what you do, you cannot escape this fate."

Kevin felt another shiver run through his body. That voice…it was as if Magi-Chan was speaking both inside and outside of his mind. It almost felt like the same sensation he felt whenever he heard Graduon speak.

"I said, back off," Steve repeated, and cocked the revolver. "I mean it. I'll kill her."

Magi-Chan smiled cruelly. "Oh, is that all? Allow me."

_Thunk! CRUNCH!_

The grenade launcher dropped from Amanda's trembling fingers, its barrel spattered with dark red droplets. Megagi shuddered once and flopped limply to the ground as a pool of blood began spreading out beneath her head from the point where the 40mm shell had smashed the back of her skull into pulp. Kevin was about to dive for cover when the blood-covered, unexploded grenade rose from inside the skunk's head with a repulsive _squish_. Almost lazily, Magi-Chan twirled the shell around and made it hover in front of Amanda's face, as if mocking her with her own ammunition. Finally, it split into individual components and fell harmlessly to the ground.

"You see," continued the Sonichu in a disinterested voice, "I'm not really all that concerned with you and your little 'hostage negotiation' attempts. Now please, drop your weapons or I will rip them from your hands. Ledger, please comply…for the sake of your comrades."

"Why don't you just kill us, then?" snarled Al. "You're not like the other recolors – why even bother with the big villain speech?"

"Villain? Hardly." Magi-Chan laughed. "Just a concerned third party. You really must do away with this naiveté, Ledger. More agendas are in motion here than you can even comprehend."

"So what's yours?"

"A family matter, I'm afraid." The psychic chu glanced at something off in the distance. "Oh my. It appears your fearless leader has entered the fray. Shall we go check on her progress?"

"I've got a better idea," Al replied. "How about we all fire on you at the same time? I wonder…can you stop an entire _wall_ of bullets, Neo?"

The Sonichu blinked. "Actually, I was hoping that you did that. The effect is quite remarkable."

Steve's jaw twitched. "Right. Fuck this, I'm done." He threw down Origin and glanced at the Legend. "Do it, Al. You got us into this mess. You're not getting us all killed."

"No, indeed, Bubbles will be more than happy to aid you in that regard," added Magi-Chan. "Do as your lieutenant says, Ledger. You've done quite enough for today."

"Damn it," hissed Zoey as Steve stepped forward and raised his hands. Al cursed and flung his M4 to the ground, followed by his two pistols. Kevin hesitated, then followed suit as well. One by one, the Honey Badgers surrendered their weapons, while Magi-Chan observed them with a smile. Eventually, they all stood before the Sonichu with their hands in the air.

"An excellent choice," commented Magi-Chan. "Now then…"

In a flash of light, the grassy fields and trees of CWC-Central Park were gone, replaced instead by a war-torn parking lot littered with burning cars, debris from destroyed Transformers, and the bodies of several dozen Jerkops, EHPF officers, and loyalist mercenaries. Kevin stared across the scene of destruction, his eyes wide as he realized the sheer scale of the June Offensive's failure.

By now, the siege was nearly over. What few surviving Jerkops were left were in full retreat, heading for Punislavs or transport Crackders as Angelica Rosechu and Zapina Rosechu hammered the operatives again and again from the air. Entire squads were being rounded up and loaded into EHPF vans by loyalists and Sonichus, while the distant rattle of gunfire sounded across the parking lot from the remaining shootouts.

The worst of it, though, was still yet to come. Looking up, Kevin could see Mary Lee Walsh herself battling ferociously against Sonichu on some sort of purple energy grid, striking out again and again with Graduon and her trident as the yellow Electric Hedgehog Pokémon dodged and spun around her attacks, pausing only to send a Thundershock or a few Spin Dashes in her direction. As Walsh flung a spray of purple energy spheres from Graduon's crystal, Sonichu lashed out and sent a bolt of electricity into her hand, forcing the PVCC commander to drop her trident. Before she could react, the furious chu had launched a Homing Attack on her, but Graduon quickly conjured a force field to protect her. Sonichu merely slammed into it and spun, whirling in a yellow and battery-blue blur against the might of the ancient spirit's dark energy.

For a moment, Kevin dared to hope that Walsh would be able to overpower her foe. Then the barrier shattered, and Sonichu's sneaker smashed into her jaw from beneath, sending her flying backward and over the edge of the grid.

"You see?" sneered Magi-Chan as he floated forward to watch the battle. At his order, a squad of loyalist mercenaries quickly surrounded the Honey Badgers, cutting off any possible avenues of escape they might have been able to use. "Your little war…was always a hopeless endeavor. Not even your leader stands a chance against us. If she cannot even defeat Sonichu with the help of her staff…what chance did _you_ ever have?"

Kevin's stomach had become a black hole, threatening to devour him and suck him down into the depths of despair as he watched Walsh lose her grip and fall…only to be saved by Sonichu grabbing her. It was hardly a gesture of mercy – the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon simply wanted the citizens of CWCville to witness her defeat, and his own heroic deed in saving her life.

_Salt in the wounds…all salt in the wounds…_

As Sonichu flung his foe back to the safety of the airborne grid and plummeted down to the parking lot, Walsh raised Graduon and conjured a sphere around herself, then shot away toward Menchi-Nasu, along with the Crackders that had managed to escape. It had taken less than five hours, and the June Offensive was already over and done. It was all over but the crying.

"Put them with the others and take them to CWCville Penitentiary," ordered Magi-Chan. "Make sure you drive past the Shopping Mall first…they deserve to see what they failed to destroy."

"_Yes sir,"_ replied the mercenary sergeant. _"Right, move 'em out. Into the vans, now."_

"Have a safe trip," the purple Sonichu added, and vanished with a smirk.

The next minute was somewhat of a blur for Kevin. When he finally managed to snap himself back to reality, he, Steve, Zoey, Nate, Jexis, and Serge had all been forced into the back of an EHPF transport van in front of the Shopping Center, handcuffed together with another Jerkop from a squad they didn't know. Kevin himself sat opposite Steve at the very back of the van, with Nate cuffed beside him. The other prisoner transports were already departing for CWCville Penitentiary, and it wouldn't be long before the Honey Badgers too would inevitably face the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon form of "justice".

"Well, that's it," Zoey muttered. Her head sank into her hands, and a shaky sob filled the van. "It's all fucked. Everything's fucked."

"They took bus." Serge pointed out of the back door to where several mercenaries and a truck were towing the Battle Bus out of CWC-Central Park and into the Shopping Center parking lot. "They took Baba Yaga. Shock-pigs and shock-pig allies will pay. Serge will make them pay."

"Quiet," Steve spoke up. "I'm thinking. I think we might have a way out of here, but we need to get to the Battle Bus first."

"What?" Nate looked up. "Seriously?"

Steve nodded. "Yeah. They must've put our guns onto the bus – there's no way they could Baba Yaga and Trogdor and everything else onto that truck. We need to know where that Rosey is." He looked at Jexis. "You know, the one you and Amanda stuffed full of C4. If they take it on the truck…I think Amanda still has the detonator."

"Holy fuck." Zoey stared intently at the Battle Bus. "You're thinking…we blow up the truck on the way to prison, get back to the bus, get our weapons, and drive back to Menchi-Nasu?"

"No," replied Steve. "I'm thinking we're going to stage a little prison break first. Let's just hope to Arceus that Al's thinking the same thing. He's in the other van with Amanda."

"Guys…" Jexis pointed toward the Shopping Center. "Guys, look."

Kevin didn't want to look, but curiosity got the better of him. News teams were clustered around the entrance, snapping photos and taking footage of Sonichu, Rosechu, the Chaotic Combo (minus Magi-Chan), Blake Sonichu, Layla Flaaffy, Reginald Sneasel, and Simonla Rosechu. The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon and genetically-altered creatures were all lined up in front of the building, posing proudly for the cameras, smiling, and even waving once in a while.

"We watched your bought from down here," Rosechu remarked to her husband. "Why did you save her?"

"Well, as a hero, I could not help but to answer her cry," Sonichu stated smugly, making sure the news crews were able to hear each and every one of his lies. "Besides which, the true final blow on that witch belongs only to Christian." He looked forward and grinned with satisfaction. "Now, let's help put the city back together, then head home for dinner and _Mary Poppins _with our children."

"YAY! WE WUV MEWWY POPPINS!" a trio of shrill, immensely irritating voices shrieked as the recolors resumed posing. Kevin could have sworn he saw Steve's eye flash with sudden fire for a split second. Following the squad leader's gaze, his own eyes quickly settled on three garishly-colored blobs – pink, purple, and yellow - standing by Sonichu and Rosechu's ankles.

Cera Rosey, Christine Rosey, and Robbie Sonee. The royal brats, in the flesh.

Kevin had seen pictures of Sonichu and Rosechu's children before, but never in his entire life had he expected to feel such…_rage_ towards them. They were well and truly hideous - sickeningly repulsive little abominations, even by the low, _low_ standards of Sonees and Roseys. He wanted these three homebreds dead, and he wanted to kill them all right now. If he hadn't been cuffed to the van, he might have very well dashed right up to them and stomped them all into goo before their parents could zap him to the extreme.

"Steve. Steve!" Zoey reached out and patted the blond Jerkop on the shoulder. "Easy! Take it easy! We'll get our chance. I swear, we'll get our chance."

Steve didn't respond. His eye was firmly fixed on Robbie Sonee, who was smiling a revolting harelip smile and waving at the cameras. There was something… something disturbingly violent about Steve's gaze – a glint of pure white fury that Kevin had never seen before.

"Put the city back together…" hissed Nate. "We fucked up the city good and proper. Who wants to bet they leave all the HARD WORK to the human citizens, like usual?"

"Motherfuckers," Jexis added. "And now after this, we just proved that we can't even take out Chandler's creations, even though he's gone. They're gonna _hate_ us. The humans, I mean."

"Well, Megagi's dead," replied Zoey. "That's _one_."

"But who's gonna miss Megagi?" asked Kevin solemnly.

"Wait, what?" One of the other captive Jerkops perked up. "What was that? Something about Megagi?"

"Yeah, we took her out," explained Steve. "Actually, Magi-Chan did. We just injured her. Did any other recolors get killed out there? What about Jamsta or Lolisa or-"

"Nope," sighed the Jerkop. "And both of our agents are down. Ivy O'Neil and Sarah McKenzie. Goddamn it, we're all fucking down now."

"But not out," said Zoey. "Hang on…you look familiar."

"You guys saved my life four years ago, back in the abandoned zone," the frizzy-haired man continued. "Yuri, remember? Angelica took out my squadmates." He nodded at Kevin. "Then she went after you. I still don't know how you survived that."

"Honestly, I don't either," replied Kevin. "Look, we might be able to get out of here. Just…don't give up yet. It's not over until we're all dead."

"That might end up being the case if we botch this," muttered Steve. "I've heard stories…terrible things about what goes on in CWCville Penn. If Bubbles gets her paws on us, we're all _fucked_."

"You said a bad wowd."

Steve whirled around to see Cera, Christine, and Robbie staring up at him from down on the parking lot. Their parents were still over by the Shopping Center entrance, but even if any of the Jerkops had managed to find something to kill them with, the mercenaries would have seen it.

"Dose awe da Jewkop twolls dat Mommy an Daddy beat up!" squealed Cera, pointing to the Honey Badgers and hopping up and down on her stumpfeet. "Hee hee! You big meanies awe gonna pway wif Aunt Bubbwes! She's gonna teach you ta be nice ta us, 'cuz we're speshul!"

"Awe you a pywat?" asked Robbie, gazing blankly up at Steve.

The blond Jerkop leaned forward, fixing the little Sonee with the most withering stare he'd ever given any of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon larvae. "Robbie, huh? You're _the_ Robbie Sonee?"

"Dat's wight!" replied Robbie smugly, smiling at Steve. "My daddy's da twoo an owiginal Sonichu, an he's da fastewst ting awive, an wun day, I'll be as fast as my daddy, even dough I twip a wot!" As if to emphasize this, the Sonee stumbled forward and began waddling around in circles, smirking proudly as his sisters cheered him on. Unfortunately, his display was promptly ruined when he tripped and fell six seconds into the routine, but Robbie wasn't affected in the slightest. "See? I'm getting fastewr evewy day! I'm gonna wead da next Ca-yo-tic Combow!"

"Robbie," Steve snarled, staring directly into the Sonee's vapid, reptilian eyes. "We're going to meet again one day. And on that day, I WILL BREAK YOU DEAD AND MURDER YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING FAMILY. AND BEFORE I KILL YOU, I WILL RIP YOUR FUCKING FEET OFF. DO YOU HEAR ME, ROBBIE SONEE? I WILL RIP YOUR FEET OFF, YOU SCUM-SUCKING LITTLE BRAT! YOU WILL DIE, AND WE'LL BE THERE TO SEND YOU TO HELL! THAT IS A FUCKING PROMISE!"

_FRRRPPP!_

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" screamed the three insipid baby chus as Steve lunged forward and attempted to grab Robbie, who promptly toppled backward and reflexively shit himself. As the Sonichu children shrieked and began waddling away, Zoey fought to restrain her furious squadmate, but the Jerkop pushed her back, ripped one of his boots off, and hurled it at the screaming, fleeing Sonee. He missed by about two feet, but Robbie still tripped nonetheless and immediately lost control of his bowels again.

"SAVE IT!" yelled Zoey as Steve grappled with his other boot. "Arceus, Steve, you're gonna get us all killed! CALM THE FUCK DOWN!"

"_That's enough! Get 'em out of here!"_ yelled a mercenary. Two men in combat armor appeared and slammed the van doors shut, trapping the Honey Badgers and Yuri in almost total darkness.

Kevin took a deep breath and tried to calm himself down. It didn't help much, but at least it was better than panicking.

If Steve was right about CWCville Penitentiary, there would be plenty of time for _that_ after they arrived.


	15. Chapter 11: Aftermath

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 11: Aftermath**

**June 4, 2008, CWCville, Upper West district, CWCville Penitentiary, B Block, 5:54 p.m.**

"…_and Lolisa and I just wanna give a huge shout-out to all our homebros and homegals in the Chaotic Combo and the EHPF who went through so much HARD WORK and STRESS today in the battle for our beautiriffic city! Guess those lame-o's at the PVCC are gonna think twice next time before they try and shatter all True Love Couples in CWCville again! Ha ha! And we'll be there to stop 'em and save da day, all day, every day! Now here's Lolisa with an update!"_

"Hey. Hey!" Kuri pounded on the bars of her cell in an attempt to draw the attention of the two mercenary guards outside. "True Blue, I'm talking to you! Can you make them switch channels or something? It's not like Jamsta's gonna thank _you_ guys! Come on, we're dying in here!"

"At least they're not playing music," Nate spoke up. "If one can even call that shit 'music'."

"_Shut up,"_ snarled the taller loyalist. _"Look, I hate it too. We all do. Just shut up and pray that Bubbles takes you soon."_ He chuckled._ "Ain't no radios down in the Abyss."_

Kevin shuddered and leaned back against the cold concrete wall of his cell. There was no climate control in the prison save for air conditioning, and while that might have helped in the heat of the day, evening was coming, and soon a chilly night would fall…according to Jamsta's weather predictions. He didn't have any faith in the DJ's skill as a meteorologist, but judging by the fact that his breath was quickly becoming visible, it was still going to get pretty damn cold.

After arriving at CWCville Penitentiary and being searched by more mercenary soldiers, half of the Honey Badgers had been divided up and placed in B Block with an assortment of thirty to forty other captured Jerkops from various squads, including two Picklemen, a Tomgirl, and one of Bagget's Bastards. Al and the other Badgers had been assigned to a different block, while B held Kevin, Nate, Steve, Kuri, Serge, and Zoey.

"You okay, bro?" Nate asked quietly, and sat beside Kevin. "Come on. It's gonna be all right."

"All right?" the Jerkop murmured in a distant voice. "Did you _see_ what happened? Walsh couldn't even beat Sonichu, they only lost Megagi, and we didn't even get to kill her ourselves."

"Master of Anticlimax, remember?" added Zoey broodingly, calling upon Magi-Chan Sonichu's well-earned nickname to emphasize their defeat even further.

"Do not speak of purple crazy shock-pig to Serge," Serge growled, clenching a beefy fist until his knuckles popped. "No one takes Baba Yaga from Serge. Serge will make them pay."

"We heard you the first time, Big Bear," Kuri sighed, and began twirling a few strands of hair around her fingers. Her horned headband and Poké Balls had been confiscated, but at least the guards hadn't strip-searched her or the other Honey Badgers. "Steve, how are your hands?"

"Fine," the squad leader replied tersely, and flexed his injured fingers back and forth beneath the bandages. "Right now, these are the _least_ of my problems."

"Well, we need to do _something_," continued Nate. He glanced at Kuri. "Idea! Kuri, strip down and see if you can seduce one of the guards."

"In your dreams, pervert," growled the Jerkop. "Keep thinking. Or better yet, don't."

Kevin let the snippets of Jerkop conversation wash over him, focusing instead on the memory of the kiss with Allie back in the barracks of Menchi-Nasu. It had been only a matter of hours since then, but with all that had happened to the PVCC during the June Offensive's pathetic five hour war, it might as well have happened half a lifetime ago. Now Allie was gone, imprisoned with the other half of their squad and probably wondering what had happened to _him_.

So many Jerkops captured, so many civilians killed, so much destruction and chaos…and it had all been for nothing…nothing but a dead skunk recolor and a few hundred dead Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. Kevin would have liked to hope that at least they might have dealt a heavy blow to the chu population, but considering how fast and how often the creatures reproduced, it was little more than a fool's hope. The city council would, of course, heap another few ridiculous taxes onto the poor of CWCville to pay for the damages, and the cycle would go on as normal.

The feeling of helplessness, though, was simply infuriating to Kevin. His weapons were gone, his friends had been separated from him, and worst of all, he couldn't do anything. The bars of the cell were too strong for even Serge to break, armed loyalist guards patrolled every corridor and floor of the prison, and the only thing that now awaited him and his comrades was whatever doom that Bubbles Rosechu was preparing for them down in the Abyss – the dreaded sublevel of CWCville Penitentiary specially created for her unique form of interrogation.

Minutes ticked by, each one more agonizingly slow than the last. The KCWC news program continued on and on about how heroic the Chaotic Combo had been in the "CWC-Defense" of their city, and how the Jerkops had, according to Jamsta and Lolisa, staged the June Offensive to shatter all True Love Couple hearts. Worst out of all of these audial nightmares was an interview with the Sonichu children, who (as Kevin understood it) were the chus' equivalent to baby Jesus – the first of a new generation of heroes their species could look up to. The interview, obviously, consisted of a barrage of inane twee-speak, and nothing more. If Steve's rage at hearing their earsplitting voices could have been focused into pure energy, the resulting explosion would have vaporized a good chunk of Virginia's landmass, and perhaps even part of Maryland.

Finally, after what seemed like hours of waiting for something to happen, Kevin closed his eyes and began drifting off, completely exhausted. Zoey and Kuri were already snoring in the corner of the cell, Nate was well on his way, and only Steve and Serge seemed to be awake and carrying on a hushed conversation. Kevin silently hoped that whatever they were talking about had to do with some kind of escape attempt. Before he knew it, sleep had claimed him.

* * *

**June 5, 2008, CWCville Penitentiary, B Block, 2:15 a.m.**

"WAKE UP!" yelled Nate, shaking Kevin roughly as the cell block shuddered violently and loose pieces of concrete rained down from the ceiling. In the distance, gunfire and panicked cries echoed through the prison, interspersed with a strange high-pitched noise that sounded like electronic laughter. "Kevin! Kevin, come on! Get up!"

"Nate?" Kevin blinked hurriedly, his heart pounding and his hair soaked with cold sweat. "What happened? What's that-"

"Looks like Walsh didn't forget about us after all," Steve chuckled triumphantly, grabbing Kevin's hand and helping him onto his feet. "They're giving the mercs one hell of a fight. If I know anything about PVCC raids - and I do – they're going to head right for the mainframe and get these cells unlocked. Once that happens, we're gonna head straight for the armory and get our gear back. Then we find Al and the others."

A metallic clatter sounded from the far end of B Block, followed by the familiar _ding_ of the large transport elevator. Kevin looked over to see a trio of mercenary soldiers in riot armor sprinting down the aisle toward the control room. It didn't seem right – even in a situation where the Jerkops had them outgunned and outmatched by Transformer support, Chandler's mercenaries usually stood their ground. Whatever the situation was out there, it was _far_ from normal.

"_Close that door! Seal off the block!"_ the foremost merc yelled into his radio, waving to the technicians in the control booth. _"Goddamn it, how many did we lose?"_

"_No fucking idea,"_ spat the sergeant. He glanced up and looked around the room, observing the confused faces of the Jerkop prisoners._ "Doesn't matter. Keep an eye on the rebels."_

"I got a better idea for you, jackasses," the operative from Bagget's Bastards suggested in a terrifyingly calm voice from the cell directly across from the Honey Badgers'. "You tell your little techie friends to open all these cells and the armory, and we let you walk out of here alive."

"_SHUT UP!"_ barked the third mercenary, and hurried across the aisle toward the elite Jerkop. _"Give me a reason, motherfucker. As far as we're concerned, you're all hostages now…and you're all expendable. If they send anything nasty in, we're gonna start gunning you down."_

"Big words from one of Chandler's True Blue bitches," sneered the Tomgirl operative, a black man who seemed somewhat familiar to Kevin, though he couldn't quite remember his name. "You scared of us? Aww, don't worry, dawg. We won't tell anyone you shit your pants and-"

_CLANG! _A thick steel grille slammed into the concrete floor and broke apart, rattling ominously as the stunned mercenaries and Jerkops slowly traced its path of descent back up to an air duct set into the ceiling. Squinting his eyes, Kevin scanned the metal passage for signs of movement, then suddenly drew back in shock when the entire duct began shaking chaotically.

"_Shit. B Block, open the inner security doors."_ The mercenary sergeant paused, tapped his radio, and cursed violently. _"Goddamnit, B Block, what the fuck are you doing? OPEN THE DOOR!"_

There was no response from the cell block's technicians. Instead, a high-pitched, unquestionably mischievous squeal rang out from the soldier's receiver.

"_Tee hee! I'm in ur control room, unlocking ur cells! LULZ!"_

_BZZZZZT! _Simultaneously, every single prison cell in B Block unlocked itself and slid open. Wasting no time, Steve and a few other nearby Jerkops lunged through the doors toward their captors, but the would-be prison riot was quickly halted when the mercenaries snapped into a triangular firing formation and leveled their guns at the approaching rebels.

"_Stay…back…"_ growled the sergeant, and took aim with his M4. _"Get back in your cells or-"_

"Or what?" replied the Tomgirl with an intimidating smirk. His eyes narrowed. "We gave you fair warnings an' shit, dawg." He glanced up at the air duct. "Looks like your time just ran out."

A single flesh-colored object - about the size of a Sonee and bearing what looked like a full head of scraggly green hair and two horned antennae - burst out of the duct and plummeted toward the mercenaries, then spread a pair of blue bat wings and leveled out right in front of the sergeant. Its toothy maw spread into a huge grin, wider than anything Kevin could have imagined.

"_Problem?" _it squeaked, and immediately opened its mouth. _"IMMA FIRIN' MAH LAZ0R!"_

_SHOOOOOOOOP!_ A blinding beam of blue and white energy exploded from the little creature's throat and struck the mercenary full in the face, literally disintegrating his head into a bloody spray of black smoke and sizzling gore punctuated with skull fragments and pieces of armor.

"_WHEEEE! UR HEAD A SPLODE!" _cried the murderous imp as the man's decapitated body collapsed to the floor and spasmed violently in death. Satisfied, it turned to the last two soldiers and narrowed its eyes. _"Not sure if going to fight…or surrender. U mad, bro?"_

"_Fuck this," _muttered the second loyalist, and threw down his shotgun. _"Dave, it's over."_

"_Cheating sons of bitches."_ The third merc handed his assault rifle to the member of Bagget's Bastards, who smiled and accepted the weapon gleefully. _"Get out of here then, you assholes."_

"My pleasure, dawg." The Tomgirl and three more Jerkops grabbed the two men and quickly confiscated their ammo, pistols, and knives. "Anyone wanna give up a room for my homies?"

"Right over here," Steve answered, and pointed to the Honey Badgers' former cell. By now, Kevin and the others had all filed out, leaving it just as empty as it had been prior to their arrival.

"Yo, that's all fine an' shit, man," replied the operative with a chuckle, and roughly shoved Dave into the cell while the two Jerkops holding the other merc pushed their prisoner in as well. "Hey, I know you, dawg! Shit, man, they got you too?"

"Doesn't matter now," the Bagget's Bastard cut in as the little winged imp flapped over to the cell and zapped the lock with a little burst of plasma from its armstub, melting the door shut and sealing the mercenaries inside. "What matters is that we're out, we've got weapons, and it looks like we've got backup now." He glanced up. "Question is…what the hell _are_ these things?"

"_They see me trollin',"_ sang the tiny creature absent-mindedly, and grinned. _"Problem?"_

"_That's a Devil Troll, in case you're interested, Kirby,"_ Mary Lee Walsh's disembodied voice echoed through B Block, startling the Jerkops. _"An experimental LIESA unit. Vivian's got them hacking the prison mainframe as we speak, but they only managed to breach this block first."_

Kevin looked up to see more of the little drones pouring out of the air duct and flapping down to join the first one. Glancing over his shoulder, he could see another five cavorting around in the control room of B Block, plugging the USB ports on their tails into various devices while a group of loyalist technicians cowered in fear against the wall. A smile of relief quickly spread across the Jerkop's face as he watched. It hadn't seemed possible, but now they had a very good chance of making it out of CWCville Penitentiary alive and in one piece.

"Commander!" Steve pushed through the crowd and waved to the first Devil Troll, who quickly glanced down at him. "Steve Morrison, Honey Badgers squad leader. Are Al and the others…"

"_I don't know,"_ Walsh responded quickly. _"Vivian's trying to hack the surveillance network, but the security's giving her problems. We should have access to the other blocks in a minute. Until then, make your way to the armory and get your gear back. At least we've got control over that."_

"Right," Kirby grunted, checking his new M4 carbine's magazine. "Lars, what'd you get?"

"Shotguns, dawg," the Tomgirl answered as he heaved a SPAS-12 to Steve. "Yo, incoming!"

"Thanks!" shouted Steve, and caught the weapon. "Any more squad leaders? Any Manajerks?"

"They took all the Manajerks to A Block!" yelled a Jerkop from the crowd.

"Then that's where Al's gonna be," the squad leader muttered to Kevin and the other Honey Badgers. He attempted to open the combat shotgun's breech, but winced as his injured fingers slipped against the weapon. "Fuck. Zo, here, you take it. I'm no use like this."

"Give it to Serge," Zoey suggested. "I'm horrible with shotguns. Too messy and clunky."

"Is not Baba Yaga…but Serge can still break many shock-pigs and cowards with tiny weapon." Serge grabbed the SPAS-12 and dramatically cocked it, racking an unfired shell out of the shotgun in the process. It was more than obvious that he'd never used one in his life.

"Steve." Kuri glanced around as Jerkops rushed past, all shouting to each other and attempting to reconvene into their separate squads. "Steve, we've got to get Aldo and Luxo back. Do you think they put the captured Pokémon in the armory or…" Her voice broke suddenly. "Or would they-"

"Don't even say that," Zoey reassured her squadmate. "They'll be fine. You're gonna want to send them both out as soon as we find 'em, though. The Combo's probably on their way right-"

"_DOOM doom doomDOOM doom doom doomdoom doom! DOOM doom doom! Doomydoomy doom doomdoomdoom DOOM doom doom doomDOOM doom DOOM! The end! HI THERE!"_

"SUZI?!" The Jerkop was nearly knocked flat as the overjoyed LIESA unit dropped down from above and landed right in her arms, still wearing her fake Rosey costume. SUZI immediately clamped her hydraulic armstubs around Zoey's face and hugged it, her eye-screens flashing with little digital hearts. Had Kevin not been so utterly perplexed and thrilled by the combat drone's sudden arrival, he might have warned Zoey to get it away from her face before SUZI's stub-blades malfunctioned. Thankfully, that didn't happen.

"Ugh…SUZI, you've gotta stop doing that," laughed Zoey, and placed the robotic Rosey down on the floor. "How the hell did you get here? Did you see Al or any of the others on the way in?"

"_I like playing with my new INSANE friends!" _explained SUZI, twitching as something blew up inside her head. _"The pretty Satan lady said I could go on a field trip to Alcatraz if I was good!"_

"So you tagged along with the…Devil Trolls?" Steve asked confusedly, still unable to believe that the giggling little imps were actually costumed LIESA units. "I swear, if this is one of those top secret things that Al never told us about, I'm gonna spike his next tequila shot with BYD. Well, if we get out of here, anyway. Also, Kuri, what the _hell_ are you doing?"

Kevin glanced over to see Kuri cuddling a Devil Troll in her arms while two more scampered up and down her legs and arms like little monkeys, squealing happily and reciting various memes.

"Oh, for Arceus's sake," Zoey sighed. "Kuri, put them down. Now's not the best time for that."

"Come on," Steve growled, and stepped into the elevator with a vengeful gleam in his eye. "It's high time we got out of this hellhole. And I want my kukri back."

The sounds of battle still echoed through the facility, some far away, some nail-bitingly close as the thirty Jerkops made their way into the elevator. Even with the Devil Trolls as support, they wouldn't stand a chance against a full platoon of mercenaries and EHPF officers. The Combo had doubtlessly ordered reinforcements to hold the prison while they finished "cleaning up the city", but in the absence of the elite chus, the rebels were still heavily outgunned.

"_Kirby, McNulty, Morrison,"_ Walsh addressed the squad leaders, using her personal Devil Troll as a remote speaker. _"Until we get through to A Block, you three are in charge of all PVCC operative activity in the prison. I want each of you to take charge of an offensive – one group to hold off any loyalist reinforcements that show up, one group to clear out the top levels, and a last group to head into the sublevels. We've got some high-value prisoners down there, and unless Bubbles killed them, I'm pretty sure they want to escape from here quite a bit more than you do."_

"High-value prisoners?" asked Nate under his breath as the elevator doors slid shut around the escapees. Lars punched the button for the ground floor, and the entire lift began moving down, bringing the Jerkops closer and closer to the fighting.

Zoey nodded. "Yeah. They'd be in the Abyss. Bubbles likes to keep her enemies close."

"I'll take my team down there, then," announced Kirby. "If we need to go through Bubbles' playground to get everyone out, then bring it the fuck on."

"No, we'll take it," Steve spoke up. "Divide up the group and take the top with the Trolls. You guys are better against mercs, anyway. There shouldn't be too much security for us to deal with on the way down to the Abyss. And Bubbles isn't even there – she's with the Combo."

"I got no objection here, dawg," Lars added solemnly. He glanced at the digital screen above the elevator's control panel. "Yo, Boris, get to the front!"

"Go! Go!" Nate and Kuri pushed Serge up in between Kirby and Lars, just as the elevator ground to a halt. Outside, the sounds of gunfire and panicked shouts mingled with the loud _SHOOP_s of laz0r beams and giggling Devil Trolls. Zoey picked up SUZI and placed her on one of Serge's massive shoulders, giving the Russian man a makeshift sentry turret of his own.

_DING! _The heavy doors of the elevator slid open with a hiss, revealing a scene of utter chaos. Dead mercenary guards and broken LIESAs lay strewn about the corridors at random, while red emergency lights spun around wildly and sirens blared through every level of the immense atrium. Here and there, squads of mercenary soldiers and prison guards traded shots with flying Devil Trolls, giving as much as they received with volleys of shotgun and assault rifle fire.

"Commander," growled Kirby toward Walsh's Devil Troll as he took aim at the nearest group of loyalists, readying himself for a long and bloody charge across the prison. "Open the armory."

The little drone winked, and a pneumatic hiss sounded from the door directly beside the elevator.

"That…was a lot easier than I thought it was gonna be," commented Zoey, and shrugged.

"_Security breach,"_ an automated female voice addressed the Jerkops. _"Armory has been opened by unauthorized users. Lockdown initiated. Step away from the door. Step away from the door."_

"_JERKOPS!" _shouted a mercenary as he gunned down a Devil Troll and pointed to the elevator. _"Fucking hell, we got rebels loose! Put 'em down, boys!"_

"Go. Go!" yelled Steve as the unarmed Jerkops poured out of the lift in a panicked rush with Kirby, Lars, and Serge in the lead. "Into the armory! Get the weapons!"

The shooting began seconds later. Kevin lost his footing almost immediately, knocked over by the stampede as bullets and buckshot tore through the air around him. Steve, Zoey, and Kuri disappeared into the armory before the young Jerkop had a chance to yell for help, and there was no sign of Nate in the chaos erupting across the atrium. Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin could see several men and women collapsing to the floor, but forced himself to crawl onward, fervently wishing that his brother hadn't been among the PVCC dead. A bullet smashed into the wall less than a foot behind him, and another two ricocheted off the floor inches from his feet.

Out of nowhere,SUZI landed on the floor in front of him, her cloth Rosey costume still intact.

"_HI THERE!"_ she greeted the fallen Jerkop, and waved. _"Gimme a huuuuuug or I KILL YOU!"_

"SUZI…" panted Kevin, desperately looking around for his brother. "SUZI, where's Nate?"

"_Uh…I gotta go find…stuff…to shoot,"_ mused the little combat drone, and took off without another word. Gritting his teeth and cursing in frustration, Kevin rolled over onto his back and sat up, hoping that the mercs wouldn't notice him until he could get to safety. Serge and the two squad leaders were still holding off the loyalist attack fairly well, supported by a few Jerkops who had managed to grab their weapons from the stockpile in the armory.

The deafening rattle of an assault rifle and an SMG echoed through the atrium as Zoey and Kuri burst out of the armory, firing arbitrarily into the surprised groups of mercenaries while more and more armed PVCC soldiers surged past them toward Lars, Serge, and Kirby. Both of Kuri's Poké Balls now hung from her belt again, along with her new custom-forged tekko-kagi. Encouraged by the arrival of his squadmates, Kevin dashed for the armory door.

"SERGE!" Zoey waved to the colossal Russian as two Devil Trolls and SUZI hovered overhead and unleashed a furious volley of tiny plasma blasts and machine gun rounds from their respective stub-guns. "SERGE, GET OVER HERE! WE FOUND BABA YAGA!"

"AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAA!" Serge's deafening roar of triumphant laughter thundered through the prison. "COME TO PAPA SERGE! IT HAS BEEN TOO LONG, DARLING!"

Through the smoke and strobe-like flashes of gunfire, Kevin could see a huge shape barreling toward the armory. The SPAS-12 was gone – Serge had no need of such an inferior weapon when his beloved minigun lay within reach. Chuckling with immense relief, the Jerkop grabbed his AK-47 from a rack and hurriedly began loading a new magazine into the breech.

"_Security breach,"_ the PA system crackled again. _"Lockdown protocols corrupted. D Block has been opened by unauthorized users. All security personnel, report to the atrium. Security breach. Lockdown protocols corrupted. E Block has been opened by unauthorized users. 113. Security-"_

"We got D and E!" yelled Kirby, looking across the hall as two more transport lifts began rumbling their way down toward the ground floor. "Everyone, give 'em covering fire!"

_DING! DING!_ Both elevators opened simultaneously, disgorging twin waves of former Jerkop prisoners into the prison lobby. Kevin fired off a few bursts in the general direction of the mercenaries, taking care not to accidentally gun down any of the PVCC personnel sprinting toward the armory. The mere idea of murdering Allie or Matt or any of the missing Honey Badgers via friendly fire was simply appalling.

"OVER HERE!" Zoey shouted frantically, beckoning to the group of unarmed operatives as Lars and Kirby directed their ragtag assault teams onward through the atrium-turned-battleground. Half a dozen Jerkops were either struck or killed by loyalist fire in the mad rush for the armory, but by now, the growing army of rearmed and furious fugitives, Devil Trolls, and SUZI was proving too much for even the well-trained mercenaries to handle.

Kevin whirled away from the door just in the nick of time. The stampede of frantic Jerkops would most likely have trampled him where he stood had he not moved. As the horde of relieved men and women scattered through the armory to claim their confiscated weapons and gear, he began hastily scanning the crowd for any sign of his squadmates. If they'd been killed…

"Get him in there! Easy! Easy! Keep the wound above his head!"

Allie and Nick pushed their way into the room, carrying an unconscious and frighteningly pale Matt while Jexis hurriedly pressed bundles of cloth against the Jerkop's bleeding shoulder.

"What the hell happened?" yelled Steve, who – unable to hold Origin without extreme pain - had been making himself useful by passing out ammunition to the incoming Jerkops. "Guys, what did they do? Anyone else hurt?"

"Loyalist cocksuckers!" snarled Amanda, and sprinted in behind the other Jerkops. "They cuffed him to a radiator and started kickin' his shoulder over and over, right in the fuckin' wound."

Kevin dashed over to his squadmates just in time to see the Honey Badgers lowering Matt down to the floor while Jexis and Steve retrieved a first aid kit from a pile in the armory. Allie looked up, surprised, and their eyes met for a split second. Then the urgency of the situation kicked in again, and their reunion ended almost as soon as it had begun.

"Arceus," swore Jexis, and knelt beside the injured Jerkop. "He's gonna need a transfusion."

"Hey." Nate limped into the armory and rolled up his sleeve, panting from exhaustion. "Anyone miss me? Let's just say one of those mercs _really_ wanted me dead. Lars got him, thank Arceus."

"Goddamnit, Nate," Kevin growled as he embraced his older brother. "Listen, I got this. Don't-"

"Too late. Jexis, needle me." The Jerkop held out his arm to the medic, who hesitated briefly, then wound a strip of medical tape tight around his bicep and gently slid the tip of a syringe into his vein. Working quickly, she inserted another syringe into Matt's limp arm and connected the two with a length of clear plastic tubing. Blood quickly filled the tube, running down from Nate into the injured operative in a solid red stream.

"Good work, Jexis," muttered Steve. "Okay, everyone listen up. Al's still in A Block, but we're gonna have EHPF and merc squads coming down on this place in a matter of minutes. There's a bunch of high-value prisoners down in the Abyss that we're gonna set free. Kevin, Allie, Amanda, Nick, Kuri, you come with me. Zoey, Nate, Serge, Jexis, stay here with SUZI and keep an eye on Matt. If Al shows up, I've got my radio."

"Sometimes I think you're trying to kill me, you blond bastard," Nick snapped, but grabbed his sniper rifle and machete all the same. "Whatever. Better than dying in a cell."

"I'm just hoping no one dies, period," the squad leader responded quickly, stepping up to help Allie retrieve Trogdor the Burninator from a large pile of weapons marked SPECIAL - UNCATEGORIZED. "Heh. Guess they didn't know where to put it."

"Guess not," replied the young Jerkop, and slid her welder's mask down over her head. It took Amanda a few seconds to locate her own grenade launcher in a pile of RPGs and other explosive weapons, but eventually, the small team of operatives had returned to full combat effectiveness. Kevin felt complete again with his pistol and George's hunting knife strapped to his belt, and from what he'd seen, his AK-47 was still performing admirably. He was more than ready to go.

"Fucking _yes_," breathed Steve as his injured, trembling fingers closed around Origin's grip at last. "I swear, I'm gonna gut the son of a bitch who fired that Javelin into the Bus." He glanced up at the Jerkops assembled around him. "All right, stay close. We'll take the central elevator."

"Aw, really?" Amanda muttered sarcastically. "I was hopin' we'd have to take the stairs."

The squad leader glanced back and winked – an easy task for him. "Don't give me any ideas."

"Noted." The Jerkop gave her grenade launcher's drum a quick spin. "Lead on, Big Boss."

"I was wondering when you were going to call me that," replied Steve with a dry chuckle.

The fighting had died down to a few scattered shootouts by now, but Kevin and his squadmates made their way across the atrium with caution nevertheless. A few Devil Trolls hovered and flapped around Kuri, some even landing on her shoulders and head. For some reason that Kevin couldn't explain, the little saboteur drones were incredibly fond of her. Maybe it was the horns.

"Commander, can you hear us?" Steve asked one of the LIESAs warily. "We're heading to the sublevels now. We can get some of your Devil Trolls into the systems down there."

The saboteur drone paused briefly, then spoke in Walsh's voice. _"I read you, Morrison. Take these three with you – they'll do all the hacking work while you clear out the Abyss."_

"YES!" Kuri pumped her fist excitedly and gathered all three of the Devil Trolls into her arms for a group hug. The drones squeaked with surprise, but within seconds, they were all hugging her back. Steve just rolled his eyes and led the Honey Badgers onward, into the elevator.

"I swear, that Abyss better not be a whole fuckin' crazy water maze or something," Amanda muttered as the doors slid shut behind her. Steve pushed the last button on the control panel, and the lift began slowly moving downward, into the bowels of CWCville Penitentiary. "So how come you lucky bastards got out first? I was stuck in D Block with Matt and Jexis."

"Thank the Devil Trolls and Walsh," Steve replied. He let out a sigh and slid down the elevator wall to the floor. "Let's just…let's just worry about the other prisoners and Al right now. We can talk about this more when we get back to Menchi-Nasu."

"And how the hell are we gonna get out of here without being shot and zapped?" asked Nick.

Steve paused. "Fuck, I didn't think about that part. Guess we'll just shoot our way out?"

"I suppose." The Jerkop toyed with his sniper rifle and glanced up. "Is it too late for me to go back and trade places with Zoey or Serge? I don't like the sound of this Abyss place."

"Come on. We got your back, hermano," Amanda reassured him halfheartedly.

Kevin remained silent, looking from Allie to the rest of the Honey Badgers nervously as the digital screen ticked down through each sublevel they passed. Visions of dark, frightening torture chambers straight out of the Dark Ages filled his imagination – iron maidens and racks and thumbscrews and all sorts of cruel and unusual interrogation machines that Bubbles loved to use for her horrific hobbies. If only the Combo knew the truth about their allegedly retarded sister.

"_Sublevel 13,"_ announced the computerized voice as the elevator doors opened with a _DING!_ and an ominous hiss, revealing a dimly lit metal corridor. _"Please continue to processing room."_

"On me, Honey Badgers," Steve ordered, and drew back Origin's hammer with a sharp _click_. Kevin and Allie followed him into the hallway, with Amanda, Nick, Kuri, and the Devil Trolls taking up the rear guard. There hadn't been any mercenary guards waiting for them, but Kevin wasn't so quick to dismiss the possibility of an ambush. The loyalists were smart, much smarter than their EHPF allies. If anything, the Jerkops and LIESAs were even more vulnerable down in enemy territory, with no way of knowing where Bubbles was keeping the prisoners.

A single sealed door lay at the end of the hall, beneath a sign that read PROCESSING ROOM. Steve turned to Kuri and plucked one of the Devil Trolls off her shoulder, then held it next to the lock. The little drone obediently activated one of its plasma stubcannons and blasted the entire mechanism into glowing slag, freeing the door and allowing Kevin and Nick to force it open. The other two trolls leapt into the air with glee and headed for the ceiling, each one dispersing into a separate air duct to seek out and hack any security mainframes that lay on Sublevel 13.

"Oh no you don't," Kuri scolded the last Devil Troll and grabbed it by its USB cord tail as it flapped its wings in an attempt to join its fellow robots. "You're staying with me, little guy."

"_Y u no let me HAAAAAX?"_ the LIESA unit sighed disappointedly. _"Gaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy…"_

"We might need your laz0r," explained the Jerkop. "Also, you're gonna need to hack some stuff in here too. Just stay with me and blast anything I tell you to, okay?"

"_Me gusta,"_ replied the Devil Troll, prompting a double-take from Nick.

"Breaching!" yelled Steve, and kicked the door in. Allie pushed past her squadmates and fired off a quick burst of burning fuel in case any mercs were waiting just inside the next room, while Kuri and Kevin stepped up to scan for further hostiles. The sight that lay before the Jerkops, though, was nothing like what they had been expecting.

"Whoa…" whispered Kuri as the last few flames from Trogdor's blast sputtered and died out. At first glance, the room appeared to be some sort of exhibit for aquatic life, illuminated by rows upon rows of eerie blue LED lights that ran along the walls and floors like the bioluminescent glow of some bizarre jellyfish from a deep ocean trench. The sound of dripping water echoed through the cavernous atrium, accompanied by the low hum of some kind of energy and distant splashing sounds. Three rows of giant cylindrical tanks, each one about seven feet tall and filled with cloudy greenish water and a single gently pulsing blue light, stood in the middle of the giant room, while a massive sheet of clear glass covered the entire eastern wall. It looked like an aquarium – the most terrifying aquarium that either of the Jerkops could have ever imagined.

Kevin took a deep breath and stepped inside the antechamber, praying that there weren't any loyalist soldiers with night vision goggles waiting to ambush them…or something worse. Kuri and Allie followed cautiously, then Steve, then Amanda and Nick. As each of the Honey Badgers entered the unnerving room, a collective intake of breath spread through the group. This was an evil place, a place that no free Jerkop had ever seen before, a place where unspeakable atrocities had been committed against the most infamous convicts of CWCville Penitentiary.

The domain of Bubbles Rosechu.

"Watch the shadows," instructed Steve as the Honey Badgers made their way toward the rows of luminous tanks. "Kuri, loose that Devil Troll. We've got to find a way to get those cells open."

Kuri nodded and released the little saboteur drone, which immediately unfurled its wings and lifted off into the air. Once it had reached a satisfactory height, it began circling around and scanning the room silently, trying to pinpoint a suitable control node from where it could begin its vicious onslaught of viruses and hacking programs.

Something moved inside the giant aquarium on the east wall – a colossal shadow that shot past in the blink of an eye. Kevin drew in a startled breath and looked at Steve confusedly, but the squad leader hadn't noticed. His eye was firmly focused on the closest tank, and the obscured figure who drifted limply inside the enveloping liquid.

"Arceus," Amanda swore. "So that's where she keeps 'em."

"Hydrostasis." Steve rapped the glass with Origin's barrel. "It kinda figures that Bubbles would find something like that to use for her personal prison cells."

"They're…are they _alive_ in there?" asked Kevin in astonishment.

"Looks like," replied Nick. "Sedated too, probably." He looked up, searching the room for the hovering Devil Troll. "Hey Kuri, where'd your little friend go?"

_CLANG! SPLASH!_

Kevin nearly jumped at the loud clatter of metal against the black stone floor. As he and the other Honey Badgers whirled toward the sudden sound, they found themselves staring at a little crumpled pile of sparking circuitry and sodden cloth. It could only have been one thing.

"No…" Kuri whispered in horror, falling to her knees beside the destroyed remnants of the Devil Troll. The entire LIESA lay in a growing puddle of water, its eye-screens blank and grey. Its tiny body had been violently crushed by an immense amount of pressure, and now lay broken and useless inside its flimsy stitched-together costume.

"_Not a very good swimmer, is he?"_ a girlish, high-pitched voice snickered, seemingly from all around the Honey Badgers. _"I wonder if you'll do any better at my games!"_

With a shuddering hiss, the entire room began to shake. As Kevin and his squadmates looked on in disbelief, the floor beneath them shifted and slid back to reveal a ring of circular pools around the hydrostasis cells, all connected to one another by an underwater Plexiglas tunnel network. Schools of tiny fat black and blue fish frolicked and darted around in the water, some even leaping up and splashing around happily on the surface like miniature seals.

"Isn't it just so _whimsical_?" giggled Bubbles Rosechu as she rose, ominously, from the pool in front of the Jerkops, lying teasingly on her side on a quivering pillar of water. "I love surprise parties! We're gonna have _so_ much fun together! Hee hee hee!"

"Madre de Dios," Nick murmured. Moving almost all at the same time, the Honey Badgers raised their weapons and took aim at the blue Rosechu, but found themselves confronted by a shimmering sphere of water. Bubbles floated and frolicked around playfully inside, laughing and spinning innocently as if daring the Jerkops to shoot her.

"_Not now!"_ Bubbles's amplified voice cautioned them, echoing through every pool in a sort of aquatic speaker system. _"Wait for the rest of the guests! I even invited Momma! You'll love her!"_

"Son of a bitch," growled Steve. "We walked right into a free-for-all."

"Bullets ain't gonna do shit to her with that water shield," Amanda whispered to the other Honey Badgers out of the corner of her mouth. "Grenades. Steve, we gotta use grenades."

The blond Jerkop nodded slightly, then resumed speaking to the Rosechu. "Oh? You invited your mother, Bubbles? I thought you Combo fuckers came from a rainbow time warp or something."

"_Hee hee! Nope!"_ Bubbles wagged a finger at Steve. _"Momma's the best! You're gonna love her! I'll make sure she gets to have lots of playtime with you, Mister Silly Pirate!"_ She glanced back at the giant tank. _"Yay! She's here! Well, be a gentleman and go say hello!"_

Before any of the Honey Badgers could react, Bubbles lunged out with an arm and sent an airborne stream of water flying across the room and into Steve's chest. Like some transparent offshoot of the Blob, the rippling liquid spread around the Jerkop's body in the blink of an eye, encasing him in a globe of clear seawater. Suspended by the watery sphere, Steve struggled and thrashed around in a panic, barely managing to break through the surface and draw one last deep gasp of air before the hovering stream withdrew its drowning captive into the pool.

"STEVE!" yelled Kevin, Allie, and Kuri simultaneously, their eyes wide with horror as they watched their squad leader vanish into the murky depths of the Abyss. Bubbles let out a cruel laugh and performed a mocking backwards somersault, her shrill voice reverberating around the interrogation chamber like the shriek of a banshee.

"GODDAMNIT! STEVE, HANG ON!" shouted Amanda, and fired a pair of consecutive shots from her grenade launcher directly into Bubbles' bubble. Kevin raised his AK and launched off his own high-explosive round, while Nick began taking potshots at the hovering chu and Kuri scrambled to unleash both of her Pokémon at once. Allie, knowing full well that Trogdor was about as useful against Bubbles as a Sonee's spark was against a human, quickly drew her pistol.

The explosives detonated in a thunderous chorus against Bubbles' shield, sending showers of steaming water flying in all directions. Unexpectedly, the triple blast actually ended up having an effect against the powerful Rosechu, unleashing enough concussive force to hurl her backwards out of the bubble and onto the floor. Before the Honey Badgers could redirect their fire towards her, though, an arc of water rose between the nearest two pools and spread outward, swatting the subsequent barrage of bullets and grenades aside as if they had been mere Airsoft pellets.

"Cover me!" Amanda yelled, and hurled her grenade launcher to Allie, who caught it in surprise. Bubbles charged and conjured a wave beneath her feet, but a trio of quick shots from Nick's rifle forced her to abort the attack. With a vicious yell of rage, Kuri hurled a Poké Ball directly at the oncoming Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, unleashing Aldo directly into Bubbles' face.

"KAW!" cried the Murkrow, and lashed out with a vicious Drill Peck that pierced the bubble and caught the unsuspecting Rosechu on her cheek. A gout of blood spurted into the rippling water, and Bubbles' scream of pain immediately exploded through the Abyss.

"_That wasn't nice, you meanie!"_ screamed the injured chu. _"Have some of this! Shocking Surf!"_

"NO!" shrieked Kuri as Bubbles conjured two immense sheets of water from her sphere and shot a bolt of lightning into both of them, then slammed them together around the Murkrow before it could fly to safety. Aldo floated and struggled inside the rippling airborne sphere, twitching and spasming as the Rosechu's bioelectric attack zapped him again and again. Just when it seemed as if the Pokémon could take no more, Bubbles released him and let the feathered creature fall to the ground. As Kuri dashed over, screaming in horror, Amanda slid to the edge of the nearest pool and dove right in, throwing her boots to the side first and pulling her jacket over her head.

Kevin looked around in panic. With Kuri frantically attempting to force a Revive pill into Aldo's beak, their small group of operatives had now been cut down to just himself, Nick, and Allie. Desperately sliding his second-to-last 40mm grenade into the Kalashnikov, he fired it at the pool directly below where Bubbles was hovering, in a blind hope to stun or injure the Rosechu. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Steve's distant, blurry figure thrashing around in the huge tank and pounding his fist against the glass as a monstrous shadow drew closer and closer.

_WHUMP!_ The muffled explosion hurled Bubbles out of her shield and into the air again, just as Nick finished reloading his rifle. Centering the scope on the airborne, stunned Rosechu, the Jerkop gritted his teeth and lined up a shot directly at her head. There was no way she could…

"GOO-GEEEEEEEE!"

"AAAAGHHHH!" screamed the sniper as something tiny, heavy, and wet slammed into his leg. Looking down, Kevin was shocked to discover a four-inch-tall Sonee – the same size as the ones in the swarm that had attacked Steve - hanging onto Nick's calf and attacking the sniper over and over again with vicious bites. Further toward the edge of the pool, another two dozen miniature Sonees and Roseys burst out of the water one after the other, their blue and black fur sopping wet and dotted with bioluminescent specks. They had no skirts or sneakers…just slightly flattened, flipper-like armstubs and stumpfeet that let allowed them to slowly and clumsily swim through the pools and glass tunnels beneath the floor of the Abyss.

_Oh Arceus,_ Kevin thought as the puzzle pieces assembled themselves in his head. The fat little fish hadn't been fish at all – they were Sonees and Roseys. Hundreds of tiny Sonees and Roseys.

"AMANDA!" he screamed, and rushed to the edge of the pool, completely forgetting about Bubbles in the process. A jet of compressed water exploded from the Rosechu's sphere and blasted Kevin in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him and sending him sliding backward across the slippery black floor toward one of the open pools full of hungry chu larvae. In the center of the watery battleground, Allie let out a desperate cry as she watched her squadmate tumble over the edge of the pool and into the glowing water. In seconds, Kevin too had vanished.

It had all come down to her and Kuri now. Nick had managed to kick the Sonee off of his leg, and was now fending off the other larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon with a barrage of vicious swipes from his machete. They were too small and too slippery for him to hit, though, and more of the baby chus were emerging from the pools with each passing second.

Behind them, in the tank, Steve's frantic struggles finally ceased. The last few bubbles of breath trailed from his mouth as the Jerkop's body went limp and began to drift down toward the gravel floor. A low rumbling roar sounded through the cavernous Abyss, and as the two Honey Badgers watched in utter terror, the colossal shadow of "Momma" emerged from the gloom.

The monstrous aquatic creature resembled a Swampert, and Allie was fairly certain it had been at some point in its life. But this beast was nearly the size of a Wailord, with massive webbed hands and feet, an enormous gaping mouth, and a fanlike tail that swept back and forth to propel the leviathan's immense body through the water. Narrowing its malevolent yellow eyes, the giant predator swept forward toward the tank wall and zeroed in on Steve's falling body hungrily.

"_Hahahahahahahahaaa…"_ Bubbles emerged from her watery cocoon, laughing sadistically as she stepped down onto the floor of the Abyss to examine her remaining victims. "Oh, we're having _lots_ of fun today, aren't we?"

"GAAAAHHHHH!" Kevin burst from the water and struggled over the side of the pool, his face scratched and dripping with blood from where the tiny Sonees and Roseys had attacked him. There was no sign of his squadmate, not even a wisp of blood billowing up from the tunnel she'd swam through in her attempt to rescue Steve. But now Amanda was too late, and worse still, she had vanished. If she didn't drown, the miniature chu larvae would devour her like piranhas.

"Kevin!" Allie helped him to his feet, her heart pounding in fear. "Kevin, come on! PLEASE!"

"Sonee!" "Wosey!" "Sey!" "Sonee!" "Gaa-gaa!" "Wosey!" "Goo-goo!" "Nee!" "Goo-goo!"

Coughing up water and clutching the side of his head, Kevin opened his eyes to see a veritable swarm of the tiny blue and black aquatic Sonees and Roseys waddling and wriggling their way toward him and his squadmates. Bubbles knelt down and picked up one of the miniature chus, a Sonee, who squealed in delight and began hugging her fingers with its little armstubs.

The Rosechu giggled wistfully. "They're so adorable when they're small, aren't they?" She tickled the Sonee on its little nose and hummed a soft lullaby as the rest of the swarm advanced on the Honey Badgers. "Most little Sonees and Roseys get so _big_ when they grow up. But not my babies! My babies _never_ grow up. And Blakey-Boo and I just _love_ them this way! Hee hee hee!"

"You…" choked Kevin through a mouthful of salt water. A horrible memory of the feral mother Rosechu with her litter of miniature baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon flashed through his mind.

"Oh, Magi-Chan loves his little hobbies. So creative," sighed Bubbles. "We did what we had to…for the Combo. And now you all get to play with our pretty babies!" Her voice changed suddenly, and its airheaded, overly cheery tones gave way to chilling malice. "Mommy brought you nice friends, didn't she? Yes she did! Yes she did! It's playtime, little ones! PLAYTIME!"

"YAY!" shrieked the horde of Bubbles and Blake's underdeveloped children as they surged forward in a tripping, squealing tidal wave of blue and black fuzz. "YAY! PWAYTIME! YAY!"

* * *

**CWCville Penitentiary, Sublevel 13, "The Abyss", 2:46 a.m.**

Ignoring the fire in her lungs and the immense pain in her head, Amanda kicked and struggled and pushed herself further and further down the luminous tunnel, toward the distant circle of blue light where Steve had been taken. The water around her was pleasantly warm, and if not for the tiny blue-green LED lights set into the walls, her submerged journey might have been nothing less than an agonizingly long swim through total darkness.

The Jerkop knew she was a good enough swimmer. Back in her high school and college days, she had always loved to visit the Olympic-sized pool at CWCville University and just spend entire afternoons doing laps and holding her breath. Had she not been so utterly confident in her ability to rescue her squad leader, Amanda might not have even leapt into the water at all.

But the tube was long, and Steve couldn't hold his breath forever. Then again, neither could she.

Up ahead, Amanda spotted a bubble rolling around on the tunnel's ceiling. Hurriedly swimming over to it, she pressed her lips against the plastic and sucked in the precious oxygen, savoring the momentary relief in her lungs. It would just be enough to get her through the rest of the…

A sharp pain lanced through her left hand. Struggling in shock and surprise, the Jerkop looked down to see a single tiny Rosey, only three inches tall, clinging to her wrist and biting at her thumb with its sharp little teeth. Amanda's sheer astonishment at being attacked by the little blue and black-furred hedgehog larva was quickly eclipsed by a burning surge of absolute rage. Gripping the tiny chu around its bulbous head, she squeezed her hand into a fist.

With a muffled crunch, the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's skull caved in immediately, filling the water with a cloud of blood and pieces of squished brain. Its body went on kicking and thrashing for a few seconds, then spasmed and stiffened in Amanda's hand. A horrific idea flashed through the Jerkop's mind, and for a moment, she nearly vomited from the mere thought of it. But her lungs were burning, and she needed as much oxygen as possible. Sacrifices needed to be made if she had any hope of saving Steve's life.

Grimacing, Amanda pulled the little Rosey's crushed head off and pushed her fingers down its windpipe until she touched what felt like two inflated balloons. Somehow, the baby chu hadn't had time to exhale in death, and she'd clamped its lungs shut, sealing in its air supply. With no time to think about what she was doing, the Jerkop carefully pulled out the Rosey's lungs and brought them to her mouth, then, suppressing her gag reflex, exhaled and breathed in the air trapped inside the two swollen pouches.

Amanda's disgust at the sweet, slimy taste of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon blood was quickly overridden by her sheer joy at this single breath of stale air. With renewed vigor, she continued kicking and kicking, pulling herself further and further down the tunnel until she burst out through the hole into the vast blue tank. Looking around, she noticed that the floor was blanketed in pieces of gravel – an odd feature for Bubbles' personal pool.

Outside, through the tank wall, Amanda could see her companions still fighting the Rosechu. She only hoped they could hold out long enough for her to make use of her improvised exit strategy.

"_SWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMM…"_

An earsplitting rumble, like that of a colossal whale, reverberated through the tank, and darkness fell across the gravel floor. Looking up, the Jerkop was greeted with a beast straight out of her most horrifying nightmares – a vast shadowed leviathan, its immense leathery body teeming with twisted fins, spines, and glowing dots of bioluminescence like some hideous deep-sea viperfish. Its toothless, turtle-like mouth gaped open wide enough to swallow the Battle Bus, while its massive finned hands, feet, and tail churned through the water, pushing it directly towards…

_NO!_ Amanda screamed silently, her eyes bulging and her teeth clenched in disbelief and as a ragdoll, Steve Morrison drifted down through the water towards her, his sweatshirt and pants billowing out around his lifeless, motionless corpse as he sank deeper and deeper toward the tank floor. As if in a dream, Amanda began to swim up, her eyes locked onto her squad leader's falling body even as the leviathan bellowed again and zeroed in on the pair of Jerkops. Reaching out slowly, the Jerkop wrapped her arms around Steve's chest and began feeling his face and neck, desperately searching for a breath, a movement, anything.

An icy fury built within Amanda's heart as she pressed a hand against Steve's throat and felt the cold, pulseless skin beneath her fingers. There was nothing more that she could do. She'd failed.

"_SWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMM…"_

Momma's roar went unnoticed by the impassive, broken Jerkop. Amanda knew she only had another half a minute of breath left before drowning would begin, but for some reason, her lungs no longer pained her. The world around her had become a shimmering blur, a hellish void that pressed in on her like a vice, crushing her in its cold, merciless grip. She would die there, alone, swallowed up by some vile abomination with only the body of her dead squadmate for company.

_No._

Reaching for the satchel on her belt, Amanda felt her fingers close around the four blocks of C4 she'd taken from the armory. With Steve's body secure beneath her arm, she closed her eyes and began kicking as hard as she could, directly toward the Plexiglas tank wall. Behind her, Momma drew closer and closer like an orca closing in on a seal, her reptilian eyes narrowed in immense concentration as she let out a triumphant roar and opened her jaws to devour this new prey.

Blackness spread across Amanda's vision, starting at the corners of her eyes and working its way in toward the centers. Hugging Steve against her, she pushed a single remote pin into the first C4 block and let all four of the explosives drop to the bottom of the tank. As the colossal marine predator lunged forward to snap up the Jerkops, Amanda grabbed her detonator and flipped open its secondary failsafe switch to blow every single active charge she had planted.

_Three…two…one…_

**CWCville Penitentiary, A Block, control room, 2:49 a.m.**

"Goo-goo! Tee hee! Wosey!" the feral Rosey squealed happily as it giggled and waddled around the control room in its little game of hugging everyone's legs again and again. She was so happy that the two big strong EHPF officers in the room had saved her from the big smelly bus and helped make all the owies in her tummy go away! "Goo-goo! Wosey! Hee hee hee! Sey! Sey!"

"The security door's holding," Roy announced, wiping beads of sweat from his forehead and leaning back in his swivel chair. "I just set up another firewall – it should keep those little bastard robots out a little longer until we can lock down the whole system. Eddie, get on the line and find out what the hell's keeping those reinforcements!"

"We're looking at an entire fuckin' riot down in the Atrium level!" shouted another technician as he glanced from screen to screen and scrolled through footage of Devil Trolls and Jerkops attacking and killing the mercenary guards. "They shut down all our comms – I can't get any calls through! Listen to this shit!" He pushed a button, and the room immediately filled with the sound of mischievous laughter.

"_Heeheeheehee! DENIED!"_ squealed a Devil Troll. There was a burst of static, and "Never Gonna Give You Up" blasted out of the speakers at maximum volume. Eddie winced and slammed his hand onto the button again, but the music didn't stop.

"HOLY FUCK!" Roy yelled over the deafening sounds of '80s music and Rick Astley's voice. "TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!"

"I CAN'T! I CAN'T STOP IT!" Eddie's eyes darted from panel to panel as he tried to override the control room's PA system. The other four technicians in the room were desperately typing commands into their consoles, trying to override the cyberattack while the two Sonichu guards clutched their ears and screamed in pain, rendered even more completely useless by the music.

"Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!" whined the Rosey, and began tugging on Roy's pants, trying to make him turn off the loud scary sounds. When that attempt failed, she wrapped her little armstubs around his leg and began squirming her way up toward his lap, all the while screeching "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" as loud as she could.

"FOR FUCK'S SAKE, STOP IT!" screamed the technician, and tried to shake off the fat little creature. "GET OFF ME, YOU FUZZY PIECE OF SHIT! GET OFF ME!"

"Woseeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey! Seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Goo-geeeeeeeee!"

_Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep! Beep-beep!_

Roy glanced down just in time to see a red light flickering through the Rosey's belly fur. It took him a second to realize what the light meant, but by the time reality struck, it was far too late.

"BOMB! IT'S A FUCKING B-"

Down in the cell block, Al looked up and grinned as an immense fireball engulfed the control room, shattering its massive window, killing every loyalist inside, and instantly deactivating both the outer security doors and every single electronic lock for every single prison cell in A Block.

_About fucking time, Amanda,_ he thought proudly, and kicked the door open.

**CWCville Penitentiary, Sublevel 13, "The Abyss", 2:49 a.m.**

As Amanda's C4 charges blew in a spectacular chain reaction, the massive wall shattered and gave way, spilling thousands of gallons of water through the Abyss. Grabbing Allie by the arm, Kevin pulled her behind the nearest hydrostasis tank and hugged her close, planting his feet against the floor to brace for the tidal wave. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Nick and Kuri running for cover, while Bubbles could only stare in surprise at the oncoming wall of water.

It was like being hit by a freight train – a wet, unstoppable, merciless liquid freight train. If the Jerkops hadn't been shielded by the immensely strong cell, the initial force of the wave would have knocked them both unconscious in a flash. Dozens upon dozens of the tiny aquatic Sonees and Roseys were caught and swept away before they could even scream, engulfed in the powerful deluge as if they had been ants caught by the stream of a garden hose. Kevin barely had time to draw a terrified breath and stow his AK before the current slammed into him and Allie as well, tearing them away from each other's embrace and plunging them into the watery chaos.

As he spun and twisted in the surging flood, Kevin struggled to kick his way upward, fighting the current while tiny wet blobs struck him in the chest and bounced off one by one. Opening his eyes, he realized that the projectiles were, in fact, little chus being thrown around helplessly by the sheer strength of the flood. Muffled squeals filled the water around him as the swarm of miniature babies frantically paddled and kicked to stay afloat, along with a low roar that he knew could only have come from Momma. Bubbles, meanwhile, had seemingly vanished.

_WHUMP!_

Something large and heavy slammed into the Jerkop without warning, nearly knocking the last remnants of breath out of his lungs. Kevin nearly suffered a panic attack at the thought of being devoured by the leviathan Swampert, but the object wasn't nearly big enough to be Momma's jaws. Peering through the water with blurry, stinging eyes, he managed to catch a glimpse of blond hair and a flash of white cloth.

Fighting for breath and fueled by desperation, Kevin kicked and kicked upward, his arm wrapped in an iron grip around Steve's lifeless body. The rushing waters were leveling out now, as the massive tank disgorged its contents into the newly-flooded Abyss and the rest of Sublevel 13.

At long last, just when it seemed as if Kevin's lungs would burst, the two Jerkops finally reached the surface, just a few feet away from the upper ledge of one of the six support columns spread out through the interrogation chamber. The blue-green LEDs still shone through the waters below, but now several flashing red emergency lights were spinning overhead as well. From what he could see, the chamber was in lockdown, and even though the flooding had stopped, the Honey Badgers were now trapped inside with Momma, Bubbles, and the Rosechu's brood.

"KEVIN! OVER HERE!"

Kevin looked up to see Kuri kneeling on the ledge, her arm extended towards him. The Jerkop's long brown hair was utterly soaked and she had lost her horned headband, but other than that, Kuri appeared to have been largely unharmed by the deluge.

"Over here!" she called again, her voice choked with anxiety. "Get out of the water!"

"_SWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMM…"_

Another thunderous roar from the submerged monster echoed around the otherwise soundless chamber as the two Jerkops dragged Steve's waterlogged body up out of the water and onto the ledge. Kevin's hands were trembling so much that he almost couldn't even pull himself out onto solid ground, and his head felt as if it had been run through a few cycles in a washing machine. Dizzy and disoriented, he fell to his hands and knees on the black concrete and immediately coughed up a lungful of water into the churning subterranean pool.

"Come on…come on!" Kuri grunted as she flipped Steve onto his back and started to administer CPR, pushing down on his chest repeatedly with the heels of her hands. "NO! COME ON!"

Kevin couldn't move. His brain was locked in a state of utter paralysis, unable to process what had just happened. It didn't seem possible, but he couldn't ignore the cold reality that lay before him. Gasping and choking, he collapsed to the floor and lay there, drenched and shivering in the darkness while Kuri shakily forced Steve's mouth open and pressed her own against it to begin resuscitation breathing. The blond Jerkop still wasn't moving. Not even a twitch.

A frantic splashing sounded beside him. Through one hazy eye, Kevin watched as Allie and Nick emerged, soaked and coughing, from the deep. He tried to call to them, but the words wouldn't come…only a few drops of water and a single rattling breath. Allie knelt beside him and touched his face briefly, checking for a pulse, then dashed over to where Kuri was trying to revive Steve.

"Where's Amanda? Did anyone see her on the way up?" yelled Nick. "AMANDA! AMANDA!"

"_She's here,"_ an alarmingly calm voice answered through the water. _"Safe and sound."_

Bubbles Rosechu ascended inch by inch from the depths of the flooded Abyss, supported by a gushing column of water and carrying a dozen limp little balls of soaking fluff in her arms. Her yellow eyes narrowed to slits as she stared at the Jerkops, fixing them with a look of pure fury that chilled Kevin to the bone.

"My babies," the Rosechu spoke solemnly, her voice barely above a terrifying whisper. "She did it. She killed our beautiful little babies. What will my sweet Blakey-Boo say when I tell him that…that…" She sobbed and fell to her knees, clutching the drowned baby Sonees and Roseys to her chest. "…THAT SOME JERKOP WHORE KILLED OUR BEAUTIFUL BABIES?"

With a horrendous scream, Bubbles hurled her dead children at the column, pelting the Honey Badgers with a shower of tiny fuzzy bodies. A Sonee smacked the concrete right in front of Kevin's face and slid a few inches, then twitched and began coughing up water with a little "kaf-kaf-kaf" sound. Looking from the lifeless Steve to the stunned baby chu, Kevin closed his eyes in utter defeat. There was nothing more. Kuri's CPR attempts had all failed, and now she'd been reduced to pounding on the squad leader's chest, screaming frantically for the Jerkop to wake up.

And suddenly, a memory surfaced through the fog in Kevin's mind – a memory of some desolate, dark place filled with streaks of blue light and an inexplicable brightness that lay beyond the black. And there was more…a clap of thunder. A sudden jolt. A cold, lifeless hand.

Unconsciously, he reached out and closed his fingers around the little Sonee.

"YOU KILLED MY BABIES, YOU FILTHY NIGGO B-!" shrieked Bubbles, and raised her hand into the air. Amanda exploded out of the deep, gripped from the neck down by a rippling liquid tentacle. At first, Kevin thought the last of his squadmates had drowned as well, but then Amanda let out a hacking cough and spat out a mouthful of water into the Rosechu's face.

"Aww, Mommy's angry," growled the trapped Jerkop as she struggled against the crushing grip of Bubbles' restraint. "Don't worry, slut, you and your Blakey-Boo can always make more."

"I AM NOT A SLUT, YOU SLANDEROUS HOMOS! BLAKEY-BOO AND I ARE A TRUE LOVE COUPLE!" The Rosechu curled her hand into a claw, and the water contracted, squeezing her captive with greater and greater amounts of force. Amanda grimaced and gasped in pain, tensing her body as the pressure pushed down on her chest and torso. Her face was turning blue, and it seemed as if she couldn't hold out for much longer.

Hand over hand, Kevin dragged himself across the ledge toward Steve's body. The Sonee in his fist squealed and writhed, kicking its stumpfeet against his fingers and gnawing at his knuckle hard enough to draw blood. Ignoring the pain in his hand and the baby chu's shrill screams, he drew George's knife with his other hand and flipped the little Sonee around to face him.

"SONEE!" it wailed, wiggling around pathetically to free itself. "GOO-GOO! WAAAAHHHH!"

"ZAP TO THE EXTREME, YOU LITTLE BASTARD!" roared Kevin, and slashed the tip of his hunting knife right through both of the Sonee's cheekspots. Shoving Kuri out of the way as the miniature Electric Hedgehog Pokémon writhed and screeched in pain, he whirled it around, ripped open Steve's shirt to expose the skin above his heart, and slammed the Sonee's mutilated face directly into the Jerkop's bare chest.

_ZZZZZAAAAPPPPPP!_

"SONEEEEEEEUGHUHGUGHUGHGUHGHH !" shrieked the Sonee as its bioelectric organs overloaded and burst in a single, concentrated surge of energy that instantly caused its own brain to rupture and explode inside its little skull. Kevin ignored the muffled _pop _and instead worked the spasming baby chu around in a circle, pushing it again and again against Steve's chest to direct the flow into his heart. If he could somehow restart it…

_Tha-thump._

Kevin drew back in surprise and let the dead Sonee fall to the floor. It rolled into the water and sank like a stone, trailing blood from its head as Bubbles watched in horrified silence. The shock of watching one of her own babies being used as a living defibrillator had stunned even her. Wasting no time, Kuri bent over Steve's body and began breathing air into his lungs again, clutching his sweatshirt in what seemed like a death grip.

_Tha-thump. Tha-thump. Tha-thump._

"WAKE UP, STEVE!" screamed Kuri, and punched her squad leader straight in the chest as hard as she possibly could. "WAKE UP, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

"_GGGGAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" _Steve's eye shot open in an instant, and what seemed like a full half-pint of water exploded from his mouth. Shaking and trembling from the direct shock he'd just received, the blond Jerkop rolled over onto his side and immediately threw up another lungful into the waters of the Abyss.

"Madre de Dios," Nick breathed, unable to believe his eyes. "You're back, you blond bastard."

"Yes…" Amanda sobbed, tears rolling down her cheeks as she watched Steve gasp for breath.

Kevin rose to his feet slowly, and drew the dripping AK-47 from the sling on his back. Beside him, Nick raised his sniper rifle, Kuri grabbed her P90, and Allie helped herself to Steve's XM8 again. In seconds, the Honey Badgers had reformed their firing line, albeit smaller than before.

Bubbles merely swept her arm towards the ledge, and a ball of water exploded from the surface of the underground sea. Inside, three dozen tiny Sonees and Roseys – the last survivors of the Rosechu's once-mighty brood – swam and tumbled about in the suspended pool, surfacing every few seconds to breathe.

"You took my babies," the Rosechu sobbed hysterically, and turned her gaze back to Kevin. "Blakey-Boo gave me everything I wanted, and you took it all away." She pointed ahead at them, tears streaming from her eyes. "Let's see how _you_ like it!"

The dripping sphere full of larvae shot across the room and shifted its shape, drawing water from the surface below until the projectile had become a sizeable wave. Helpless and unable to escape, the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon could only struggle and squeal as they were borne toward the Honey Badgers – a living tidal wave of destruction.

"_SWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMM MMMMMMMMM…"_

"SONEEEEE!" "WAAAAAHHH!" "WOSEEEEEEEY!" "GOO-GEEEEEE!" "WAAAAHHH!"

The wave disintegrated in a massive spray of water as Momma's colossal head and neck burst from the depths. Berserk with hunger, the vicious marine predator lunged and snapped at the few miniature Sonees and Roseys who had managed to swim away from the explosion. The leviathan's face dripped with red, remnants of a few dozen dead and dying baby chus who had met their ends in her cavernous mouth and turtle-like beak. Roaring hungrily, she closed her jaws around a struggling Sonee and swallowed it whole, tipping her head back as the little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon let out a piercing shriek.

"Momma…" the Rosechu giggled insanely as she watched her offspring being devoured before her own eyes. "Momma, not now. You can play with the children later, Momma! STOP IT!"

The leviathan glanced towards its adopted daughter and growled again, then resumed its feast. In seconds, the last of Bubbles' spawn had been reduced to a bloody mess of slimy viscera and scraps of fuzz, while the surviving, mortally wounded babies cried and struggled pathetically. Momma merely snapped them up and silenced their screams one by one, then submerged to find more of the drowned Sonees and Roseys to feast on.

"Why?" Bubbles sobbed helplessly. "Momma…why?"

"Cause the entire fuckin' world wants you all dead, bitch," snarled Amanda. "You furry freaks ain't meant to survive. And we're gonna wipe every single one of you off the face of the earth."

"ENOUGH!" The Rosechu's eyes blazed as she levitated on a sheet of water, ascending from the surface while geysers and waterspouts exploded across the Abyss. Her immense anger was churning the entire lake into a frenzy. "ENOUGH! I'LL KILL YOU! I'LL KILL YOU ALL!"

Suspended by her watery cocoon, Amanda gritted her teeth and closed her eyes. She'd done her job and Steve would live to fight another day. But unless Bubbles was removed, all the effort and pain would have been for nothing, and she and her squadmates would die in this watery hell. Maybe she couldn't kill the Rosechu…but she was close enough to do some serious damage.

"THAT'S IT! KILL HER!" roared Kevin, and fired his AK's last grenade directly at Bubbles. This time, though, the Combo member was ready for him. Sweeping her arm up, she redirected a wall of water into the flying explosive, blocking its flight path and encasing it in enough liquid to nullify the subsequent explosion. More bullets from Nick, Kuri, and Allie pounded the watery shield, but none managed to penetrate. In desperation, Kevin switched the Kalashnikov to full-auto and unloaded the entire magazine into the blue Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. But Bubbles still floated there, weeping and screaming for her babies as she effortlessly fended off the assault.

Through the rippling mayhem, Kevin caught a glimpse of Amanda reaching for something on her belt…something like a knife, or her sidearm. Only when the Jerkop wrenched out a tiny pin and hurled the cylindrical object at the back of her captor's head did he realize what it was.

_BOOM!_ The grenade exploded with a thunderous bang, engulfing both Amanda and Bubbles in a blaze of fire and white light. Kevin only just managed to brace himself before the concussive force of the blast knocked him backwards into Allie and sent Nick and Kuri tumbling to the floor. Instantly, the watery constructs collapsed harmlessly back into the Abyss, vanishing without a trace as if they had never existed.

As Kevin pulled himself off of Allie, he noticed a blue shape sinking into the deep in a trail of blood. Momma's immense shadow swept across it, and Bubbles vanished into the monstrous beast's jaws. For a moment, the Jerkop wondered if the mutated Swampert would devour the wounded Rosechu, but his hopes were soon dashed when Momma surfaced back in her tank, gently rocking the blue Electric Hedgehog Pokémon back and forth in her mouth as if she were a baby. The little Sonees and Roseys had been sustainable prey, but Bubbles herself was off limits.

"Anyone…hurt?" panted Allie, and rose, trembling, from the floor. "Kevin?"

"I'm fine." Kevin let out a cough as Nick grabbed his hand and pulled him up. "How's Steve?"

"M'okay…" a weak voice replied. "Nice…to be back."

Kevin looked up to see Kuri cautiously helping Steve to his feet. The squad leader's face was still frighteningly pale, but he was alive, and that was all the Honey Badgers cared about.

"What…the fuck…happened?" asked Steve, shaking his head to clear the water out of his hair and ears. "Actually, don't answer that. Who gave me CPR?"

"That was me," replied Kuri shakily. "Sorry. I think I might've busted a few of your ribs."

"Actually, I don't think you did." The Jerkop touched his chest gingerly. "Yeah, they're all fine. Huh. Okay. So now what? Where's Bubbles?" He looked around. "And…where's Amanda?"

It was as if Kevin's insides had turned to liquid. In the midst of his relief at Steve's recovery, he'd completely forgotten about Amanda. The last he'd seen of his missing squadmate was her throwing the HE grenade at point-blank range, and then…

"OVER HERE!" yelled Nick, his voice laden with panic. "GUYS! I FOUND HER!"

The Jerkops rushed to their squadmate's side, only to be greeted by the heartwrenching sight of Amanda drifting slowly and motionlessly through the water, her face and arms covered in cuts and burns from the massive explosion she'd triggered against Bubbles. Hurriedly leaping into the water, Nick grabbed hold of the woman's arm and pulled her back to the ledge, where Kevin and Allie carefully lifted her out and set her down on her back.

"Oh, Arceus," Kuri breathed, and fell to her knees beside the Jerkop's limp body. "Amanda?"

"Hey…Smurfette…" Amanda whispered, her voice little more than a gasp. "I…got the bitch…"

"Let me see! Where's she hurt?" Steve pushed his way past Nick and Kevin. "Amanda, listen, we need you to tell us where it hurts. You're not bleeding…any internal damage? Come on, Amanda, just…"

"Goddamn…Steve…" chuckled the dying Jerkop. Her hand twitched and rose an inch off the ground, as if she was trying to reach out and touch Steve. "Hey…what's it like?"

A tear rolled down the squad leader's face, and fell to the floor. "Don't you fucking say that. Don't you fucking say that, Amanda. Just tell us what's wrong."

"Ev…everything's all fucked up, Steve…" Amanda spluttered. "I'm just…dammit. Think…my spine's…broken…" She twitched once and squeezed her eyes shut. "Steve…I didn't do this for nothing. Kill 'em. Kill every…single…one of 'em. And take…back…our city…for all of us."

"No," murmured Kuri, as if in a trance. "Amanda, no…"

"Just…shut up…Kuri." Another wave of coughs racked Amanda's body. "You disgust me…but now…now I want you to eat…a whole truckload…of the little bastards. Good…girl…"

The Jerkop nodded, tears dripping down her cheeks. Amanda let out a rattling cough and looked from Kevin to Allie in turn. There were no words that needed to be said – the pride and satisfaction in her eyes was enough for them. Finally, her gaze fell upon Nick.

"Hey," Amanda whispered, and moved her arm a little. "Please…just one more time…"

Wordlessly, the Mexican soldier grabbed her hand and squeezed it, trembling as he clutched the dying Jerkop's fingers. Amanda smiled, closed her beautiful green eyes, and exhaled.

"See you later…compadre…" she finished, and lay still.

It might have been just a few minutes, or as long as several hours, before any of the Honey Badgers moved. No one spoke. Only the muffled sounds of five grieving men and women filled the cavernous room. Kind words could not have eased their pain, and any useless sentimental speeches would have only added to the aura of despair that hung over them. None of the Jerkops truly wanted to believe that Amanda Taylor was dead and gone, but the truth lay before them, just as broken and lifeless as the hundreds of Sonees and Roseys that littered the floor of Abyss.

Kevin hugged Allie more tightly than ever before, his arms shaking with sorrow and helpless defeat. First Jake, then Frank, and now Amanda. It would have been Steve, too, if not for the Jerkop's utter courage and selflessness. She'd followed her squad leader to the edge of death and helped to bring him back, giving her own life in the process to save his. She'd saved the entire squad from certain annihilation, and bought them precious time to escape from the Abyss.

A siren blared overhead, and a mechanical clatter sounded through the room.

"_Security breach," _the automated PA voice announced. _"Floodgates open. Flooding protocols have been overridden by unauthorized users. Hydrostasis tanks released. Please secure the prisoners immediately. Venting excess water buildup in 5…4…3…"_

"Into the water," ordered Steve, his face grim as he carefully knelt beside Amanda's body and picked up the dead Jerkop. "It's time to go home." He glanced up. "All of us."

* * *

**CWCville Penitentiary, ground floor, Atrium, 3:07 a.m.**

"_WHEEEEEE! U mad, bro? Problem? U mad, bro? Heeheeheehee! U mad, bro?"_

"I gotta say, these things are starting to grow on me," Al remarked as a flock of Devil Trolls flapped around the atrium, taunting and laughing at the loyalist mercenaries who had surrendered to the overwhelming force of escaped Jerkop prisoners and LIESA units. "SUZI, how did you even _find_ these cute little guys?"

"_I dunno…"_ SUZI pawed at her cloth headspikes cluelessly. _"Can we get some ice cream now?"_

"Once we get home, SUZI, you can have every single drop of ice cream in the fridge," replied Zoey, and patted the little combat drone on her head. SUZI giggled happily and jetted up to the Jerkop's shoulder, then hugged her head. "I don't even know how you'd _eat_ it, though."

"She mostly just sticks it inside her head," Al explained. "Also, why does she keep going over to _you_ so much? I thought we programmed her to recognize me as her main operator."

"Oh, be nice. Sharing is caring." Zoey held out SUZI towards a group of Devil Trolls and released her into the air to play with the squealing saboteur drones. "And I think it's because I was the first one she ever saw. It must've been her artificial Rosey behavior manifesting – they imprint on whatever they see and form a parasitic bond. Of course, SUZI didn't do that last part."

"What the hell's taking them so long, anyway?" asked Jexis. "They said they'd radio us if anything bad happened? So either nothing's wrong and they're just all lazy, or…"

"_Don't_ say it," Al cautioned her. "Matt, Nate, how's it going?"

"Fine and dandy," Nate replied weakly. His skin had turned several shades lighter from blood loss, while Matt's had returned to a semi-healthy color. "Dibs on anything sweet when we get back. Also, Al, I think I earned a few shots from your private reserve."

"Okay, fine, but don't touch my whiskey." The Manajerk glanced across the atrium, noting the flashing lights outside. "They've been waiting there forever. What the hell's keeping them out?"

"_We locked down the entire facility,"_ Mary Lee Walsh replied through a Devil Troll's speakers. _"The only way they're getting in is if they can bring in Sonichu or one of the Combo. And seeing as how I had Graduon put up a psychic barricade around the prison, that's not gonna happen anytime soon. It's only temporary, but it'll keep Magi-Chan out long enough to extract you."_

_DING!_

Al, Zoey, Jexis, Serge, Matt, and Nate all looked up simultaneously to see Steve, Kevin, Kuri, Allie, and Nick emerge from the elevator, soaking wet and looking as if they had all just stepped out of hell. Behind them, an assortment of men and women – including Kacey Devoria, Liquid Chris, and a young man with short brown hair and glasses - stood shivering and dripping in the lift, all clothed only in an assortment of towels that the Jerkops had seized from the shower room on Sublevel 3. Al immediately recognized the bespectacled prisoner as Robert Simmons, the legendary PVCC agent who had been captured in the line of duty nearly half a year earlier.

"_Arceus,"_ the voice of Walsh gasped as the prisoners stumbled out into the atrium. _"What…"_

"Bubbles," coughed Kacey, clutching her towel with one hand as she embraced Liquid with the other. "She put us into hydrostasis, Mary, but they…they blew up the Abyss and saved us. They saved all of us."

"Steve!" Zoey yelled in relief, and waved to her squadmate. "Steve, what ha-" Her voice broke as soon as her eyes settled on Amanda's limp body. "Wh…what…"

"It's over," muttered the Jerkop. He didn't even glance up once. "It's over, Zo. She's dead."

Al's knees seemed to buckle, and for a second, Kevin thought he was going to collapse. With his face obscured, the squad commander's expression was almost unreadable, but the sheer shock and disbelief in his stance were more than enough to convey the true emotions that lay behind his welder's mask.

"How?" the Manajerk asked, his voice weak and strained as he approached Steve. "How did it… What…what happened?"

Steve looked up and fixed Al with an icy glare. "You know what happened, Ledger. You know."

"I…wait, _what_?" The Legend drew back, confused. "Steve, I don't…"

"Shut your fucking mouth," ordered Steve in a calm, terrifyingly quiet tone. "This one's on you, you pig-headed son of a bitch. Come on, Zo. We're done here."

"No, we're not fucking done here!" shouted Al, and wrenched off his mask to reveal a stunned face, twisted by fury and streaked with tears. The Honey Badgers collectively recoiled in shock, even Steve. "What do you mean, 'this one's on me'? Last I heard, you brought her down with you into that hellhole! And where was I? Oh, wait, let me answer that _for_ you! LOCKED IN A FUCKING PRISON CELL!"

Steve's eye narrowed. "We never should have followed Reldnahc to that stupid fucking ambush at that stupid fucking park. You didn't listen to me. You got us all captured. And now Amanda's dead, and it's all because you were too fucking eager to kill Sonichu and take all the glory."

"WHAT?" Al's jaw dropped. "And that makes it _my _fault that _you_ got her killed?!"

_WHAM!_

The Legend reeled backwards, clutching his bleeding mouth where Steve had punched him. Grappling viciously for his M1911, he drew the pistol just as the squad leader raised Origin and cocked the hammer back. For a moment, both of the Jerkops stood facing each other, locked in a single stare of absolute hatred.

"How…_dare_…you…" Steve snarled. "I died down there, Ledger. I drowned, and Amanda was the only one who went after me. We all would've died if it hadn't been for her." He stepped back and stowed the revolver back in its holster. "So don't you _ever_ blame me for getting her killed."

"You…died?" Al sounded distant now, as if something invisible had just shattered inside him.

"_We_ died," the Jerkop corrected the Manajerk. "Because of _you_."

"BOTH OF YOU, JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP!" screamed Zoey, and fired a pistol round into the air. The deafening gunshot resounded through the Atrium, immediately disrupting the conversation between Walsh and the freed Miscreants, alerting every other Jerkop in the vicinity to the Honey Badgers' return, and interrupting the faceoff between Al and Steve.

"Right," continued the Jerkop as all eyes in the room focused on her. "I swear, if either of you ever pulls _anything_ like that again, I'm leaving this squad. I don't even care if you put me in with the fucking BattleAXEs – WE DIDN'T COME THIS FAR TO TEAR OURSELVES APART!"

Steve glanced from Al to Zoey, his face contorted in disbelief. "Zo…"

"Don't." Zoey glared at her squadmate, fixing Steve with her menacing gaze. "Shut up, Steve."

Al drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. Without a word, he reached up, flipped his mask down over his face, holstered his pistol, then turned and walked away, toward the armory.

"Fuck it all," swore Steve. He glanced up at the crowd of Jerkops and freed Miscreants who were currently staring at the Honey Badgers with shock. "Show's over. Let's get out of here."

Wordlessly, Kevin helped Nate to his feet while Allie assisted Matt. The long walk to the prison yard passed by in what seemed like a few seconds, and before he knew it, he was helping his brother up the steps of the damaged Battle Bus. Zoey took the wheel once the Jerkops had all seated themselves and Steve had carefully placed Amanda's body in the back of the bus. The Legend was still nowhere in sight, and Kevin had a feeling that they wouldn't be seeing too much of their squad leader over the next few days.

One by one, the captured PVCC pickup trucks, vans, Jeeps, and the Battle Bus started up and pulled away from the massive prison, dispersing through the dark streets of CWCville as police helicopters and EHPF cruisers closed in on them. Like a flock of blue-winged, green-haired birds, the swarm of Devil Trolls poured forth from CWCville Penitentiary and scattered before any of the loyalists could open fire, vanishing into the night with a final shout of _"KTHXBAI!"_

Kevin watched the city lights pass by, each one burning a new colored streak into his vision as the Battle Bus swerved through the streets on its way back to the safety of Menchi-Nasu. Allie sat beside him with her hand on his shoulder, but he couldn't bring himself to speak to her. In the span of a single, nightmarish day, everything he had fought for had come crashing down around him and his friends. Now Amanda was dead, the perfect cherry on top of the sundae of defeat that the Chaotic Combo, the chus, and the loyalists had just served to the entire PVCC.

There would be debriefings. There would be funerals. There would be disappointment, sorrow, even rage from Walsh and the other administrators. But despite the colossal failures of the June Offensive, Kevin knew that the life he'd known among the resistance was coming to an end, and soon a new, bitter, and more merciless PVCC would rise from the ashes of the old, more righteously-focused organization. The Jerkops had survived the turning point of the war, and even managed to snatch a huge victory – the mass prison break - at the eleventh hour.

For the PVCC and for Kevin himself, there was no turning back. If there had been any hesitation left in his heart, Amanda's death had burned it all away, leaving only a pure, vicious rage behind.

Vengeance would be theirs, even if it claimed every single one of their lives.

* * *

**Northern district, Menchi-Nasu, cafeteria, 6:44 a.m.**

Steve paced back and forth in front of the cot that bore Amanda's sheet-covered body, his jaw set and his eye focused on the concrete floor as thoughts and emotions exploded through his mind at the speed of light. The events of the June Offensive kept coming back to him again and again, from the battle on the freeway to the storming of the church to the confrontation with Magi-Chan and everything after. And interspersed through the scenes of chaos and merciless slaughter lay a single inexplicable setting – a world of darkness, surrounded by streaks of blue light, with a lone light shining forth from somewhere far off in the distance.

"Not a tunnel," he muttered to himself, gazing out across the rows of identical corpses covering the cafeteria. He hadn't bothered to count the dead Jerkops, and even after the rest of the Honey Badgers had returned to the barracks for some desperately-needed sleep, Steve remained awake and vigilant over Amanda. Something inside him was forcing him to stay with her, some unspoken promise he had made the moment he realized that she had given her life to save his.

As the minutes passed and sunlight began streaming in through the glass skylights of the cafeteria, Steve continued watching Amanda, ignorant of the PVCC medics and other personnel rushing back and forth around him. The world had become a blurry, murky place, and the bitter emotional chaos deep in the Jerkop's heart continued to fuel his inexhaustible rage, just as it had done from the very moment Christian Weston Chandler's reign had plunged the city into despair.

"Hello, Steve," a calm voice addressed him. "Are you okay?"

Steve glanced up, then turned away with a growl as soon as he recognized the Legend's familiar trench coat and welder's mask. "No. Go away."

"No," the Manajerk replied. "Not until you hear me out."

"I've heard enough already," snapped Steve. "If you want a rematch, then that's fine by me."

"I don't want to fight you, Steve," said Al cautiously. "I _never_ wanted to fight you. _You_ hit _me_."

"So why'd you let me?" the Jerkop asked, glaring at the Legend. "Because you're getting slow?"

Al was no stranger to death. He'd even believed himself to be numb to the entire concept after so much time in the field with Steve and the rest of his squad. Even the Honey Badgers who had died before Amanda – Jake and Ricky and Caroline and Scott – hadn't drawn more than a few bitter tears from the seasoned Jerkop. But this was something new, something he hadn't believed he would ever be able to feel toward one of the operatives under his command. To him, Amanda was no longer just a mere soldier, no longer just "the one with the explosions". Only when it was too late to correct his mistake did he realize what he had been doing wrong in the first place.

"Because I'm getting old," he answered with a sigh. "And this isn't my war anymore."

Al had always believed that the CWCville uprising could be won through simple military might, cold discipline, and gallons of alcohol. His years serving under Sergeant Matthew Devoria had taught him the ways of combat, of the delicate balance between soldiers and men, and he'd believed that this knowledge and his experience was all he would need to help bring the chu regime to its knees. But that was another time, another war. As the battlefield changed around him, he had failed to adapt, to change with it. And now it was tearing his squad apart.

"I've spoken to Walsh, and she's given me permission," explained Al as his subordinate stared at him with utter astonishment. "I'm resigning, and leaving the squad under your command."

"What?" Steve nearly lost his footing. "No, Al. No. You can't resign. What if they-"

"I'm transferring to the Library HQ in the abandoned zone." The Legend smiled. "The Asperpedia labs are going to be relocated there, and Leary wants me to serve as a consultant on larval extermination techniques. If anything, it'll give me time to finish my book…maybe even try to kick the whole drinking problem while I'm ahead."

Steve nodded. "I get it. You think you can just run away from it all, don't you? No. You're a soldier, Al. You need to stand and fight. I can't lead them on my own."

"Zoey will take your place as primary squad leader," Al continued, ignoring the words of his former lieutenant. "You'll need someone to take her place, too. I know you and Kuri have always been close…and Nick has more expe-"

"No," Steve interrupted him. "Shaw. It's Shaw."

"Kevin? Are you sure?"

The Jerkop nodded. "Absolutely."

Al remained still for a couple of seconds, then spoke again. "What makes you so sure that he's the best one to take Zoey's place?"

"We've all got something to fight for in this war," answered Steve. "Home, family, friends, or just the thrill from watching recolors die. I've got no home. Tanya's probably forgotten about me by now. The only friends I have left are the friends I've fought beside…" He glanced at his boots. "…and against. So there's only one thing left to motivate me. And that, Al, is _chaos_."

"That's _your_ motivation, though," the Legend sighed. "What about-"

"I'm getting to that, Al," the Jerkop continued. "As you said, you're getting old, but like it or not, this isn't just your war. It's _ours_. The difference between you and me is that you kill because you were taught to kill. Me? I kill those damn furry babies because it's _fun_. But I can't lead the squad on a platform of pure chaos. I need a foundation, and Zoey's not enough. She fights for revenge. Kevin, though, he's got his brother, and Matt…and Allie. And _that_ is his motivation, Al._ That_ is what he fights for." Steve exhaled. "Plus, he rigged up a defibrillator using a Sonee and his knife. Without him, I probably wouldn't have woken up."

Al straightened up and tipped his mask back. "Kevin it is, then. I'll let them know before I go."

"So this is goodbye then, Al?" Steve asked. There was no more hostility in his voice, only regret, and a touch of sadness. "You really want to do this?"

"It's not a question of wanting, as much as _needing_ to do this," replied the Legend. "You're ready to lead the Honey Badgers now. Hell, you were always ready to lead them. The other squad commanders and I used to joke about how much of a lazy drunk bum I was, and they suggested that maybe Walsh should make up a new rank for operatives like you…ones who had to shoulder the responsibilities of both Jerkops and Manajerks. We had this little nickname for you, seeing as how you were the one who started off this whole idea."

"…but that's all in the past now, isn't it?" Steve interrupted his old friend, and stepped forward, offering a hand. "Take care of yourself, Al, but just remember…this is still _our_ war. And when the hammer falls on 14 Brunchville Lane, you'll be right there beside us to hear them scream."

The Legend chuckled and accepted the handshake. "Can't wait. See you then, Manajerkop."

* * *

**June 6, 2008, north of Menchi-Nasu, zapbud fields, 7:24 p.m.**

"Amanda Taylor," announced Zoey as the Honey Badgers each placed a single tulip one by one into the open steel box that held the sheet-covered body of their fallen comrade. "She came to us out of necessity, to right the wrongs that Chandler forced upon her because of something as trivial as the color of her skin. Through her efforts, we secured the single greatest supply line of explosive materials, construction equipment, concrete, and metal – all of which made it possible for us to fight on, day by day, for the freedom that the loyalists stole from us." She silently nodded to SUZI, who immediately began playing an mp3 of "Adagio for Strings".

As Steve and Serge carried the box down the line of nine Jerkops, Kevin and Allie reached out and added their flowers to Amanda's colorful collection. Prior to the funeral, Zoey had decorated the coffin with a brilliant mix of red and orange flowers, even several black tulips. Amanda now rested in an explosively beautiful bouquet, covered by a plain white sheet upon which each of the Honey Badgers had signed their name. It was hardly the sort of burial that a woman as brave as Amanda deserved, but in the time of war, the Jerkops had to make do with whatever they had.

Kevin found himself thinking back to the day of Jake's funeral, back in 2004. There had been no body then, nothing to bury apart from a single baseball bat. Jake hadn't deserved to die in such a lonely place, in such a horrific way. Amanda, at least, had gone down fighting. She had chosen her fate, acting for the greater good of her squadmates. But somehow, knowing that made Jake's death even worse for Kevin. Even after so many long months had passed since Rift, he still couldn't believe he'd just stood there and watched his friend die. Steve and Al and Zoey had assured him that it was just survivor's guilt, and that Jake's death hadn't been his fault. But since that night, something had started to change in Kevin. He'd realized just how fragile his own life and the lives of his friends were. And now that Amanda had joined Jake and his old hobo friend Frank, that feeling of fragility had only increased.

Allie stood beside him, holding his hand as the procession ended and the heavy coffin was lowered into the trench. For a few seconds, the Jerkops remained in silence, watching as Serge slowly shoveled dirt back into the grave. In due course, the burial was finished – a patch of smooth brown earth in the midst of so much garish pink and blue. Once the war was over and all of the horrid zapbuds were eradicated from the field, Amanda could rest in peace at last.

Finally, after another minute of silence, Steve made his way to the front of the group and turned to face the gathered operatives. The squad leader's face appeared blank and free of emotion, but Kevin knew from experience that it was only a mask to hide Steve's true feelings. He had never seen the Jerkop this way before, and frankly, it disturbed him.

"We're standing at a crossroads." Steve glanced at Al out of the corner of his eye. "According to Al, Walsh's final report says that the PVCC survived the June Offensive with…" Taking a deep breath, he continued on. "…acceptable losses. From a tactical standpoint, a single Jerkop doesn't really amount to much in terms of combat effectiveness. But we don't operate from a tactical standpoint. We know that as a squad, every single member is essential. There _are_ no 'acceptable losses' in this war. But what we need to realize is that these things _will_ happen. And so…Al?"

Al stepped forward. "In light of the events of the June Offensive and my personal shortcomings as a Manajerk…I have chosen to relinquish command of the Honey Badgers to Steve Morrison."

"WHAT?" Zoey's stunned yell echoed across the zapbud fields, startling a few feral Sonees and Roseys playing nearby. "Al, wait a second, you're backing down because of _this_? We've lost operatives before! What about Ricky and Jake?"

"This is a personal decision, Zoey," the Legend explained with a sad smile. "I don't believe that I'm fit to command this squad anymore. You all know that I've been dealing with my alcoholism for the past ten years…six years…whatever. A really long time. I need some time to get my act together and straighten myself out." He nodded at Zoey. "I believe that Steve is more than ready to take command, and as such, you'll assume the role of squad leader in his place."

Kevin had suspected that something like this would happen, but not on the level of Al actually resigning. Most of the Honey Badgers looked just as surprised as him to hear the announcement.

"Should I appoint a secondary, then?" Zoey glanced back at Nick. "Because I'd like to nomi-"

"Steve's already chosen the secondary," Al interjected, "and I approve of his decision. Kevin?"

The blood in Kevin's veins seemed to freeze, as did the rest of his body and his brain. "Yes?"

Al flashed him a thin smile. "Congratulations." He turned and gazed across the field, sighing wistfully at the sight of so many defenseless Sonees and Roseys playing and cavorting through the flowers. "Ah, Lord knows I'm gonna miss this. Mark my words, this isn't over yet."

"Agreed," replied Steve, ignoring the looks of utter bewilderment that Kevin and Zoey were both currently wearing. "Ready to send her off, Al?"

"Yes. Yes, indeed. Rummaging through the pocket of his trench coat, the Legend withdrew Amanda's detonator. "If you Arceans are right and the afterlife isn't just heaven or hell…" He smiled and pressed the button. "Then at least she'll have some new friends coming her way."

A distant explosion echoed across the zapbud fields. Then another. Then another, and another, and another, in rapid sequence, until the total count reached a full twenty-one blasts. Twenty-one simultaneously detonating Baby Boomers – all of which had been implanted in wild Sonees and Roseys throughout the field. It was nothing short of poetry – the best possible sendoff to the woman who had caused so much destruction to the hated chus via her improvised explosives.

Without another word, Al knelt, placed the detonator on Amanda's grave, and walked away alone, back toward the walls of Menchi-Nasu. The other Honey Badgers watched him go, then turned to Steve. At last, it was done. The torch had passed, and a new Manajerk had arisen.

For a moment, the blond Jerkop looked as though he would have liked nothing more than to turn back time and erase everything that had happened between the present and Amanda's death. In time, though, the regretful expression on his face hardened into one of authority - the expression of a commander, ready and eager to prove his worth on the battlefield.

"Get some sleep, everyone," he spoke at last. "Briefing's at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow. Dismissed."

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, garage, 9:02 p.m.**

Surrounded by an assortment of duffel bags, briefcases, and SUZI, Al sat on the cold concrete floor, sipping at a bottle of Smirnoff once every few minutes. In small doses, the vodka was still able to keep up a steady buzz, while he himself stayed sober enough to actually function. Around him, PVCC technicians were still hard at work repairing the vehicles and Transformers that had been damaged during the June Offensive. The Battle Bus itself now bore a massive hole in the side from where the Javelin had struck, as well as a fair share of bullet holes and scarring. Al hated to see his most prized creation languishing in such a sorry state, and only the alcohol kept him from walking over and doing some repairs of his own.

"Hope Matt takes good care of you, darling," he mumbled through a thick slur.

"Al! AL!"

The Legend turned just in time to see Zoey hurrying across the garage, forcibly pushing her way through the assorted PVCC personnel in her haste to reach him. The Jerkop wore an expression somewhere between frustration and confusion, and Al had a fairly good idea of what she wanted to speak to him about. It could hardly have been a worse time for such a conversation.

"Damn it, I thought you'd already left," Zoey panted, and sat down beside her former Manajerk. SUZI giggled and moved out of the way to let her in. "Al, listen, I seriously need to talk to you."

"You want to try and convince me to stay," answered Al. "Or are you going to start listing off reasons as to why Kevin shouldn't be your secondary?"

"No," snapped the Jerkop. "It's not you. It's not Kevin, I respect that decision. It's Steve."

Al glanced up, surprised. "What about him? I thought you two were best friends."

"I…well, it's not that," Zoey continued. "Al, I think he's losing his mind. You can't leave him in charge in the state he's in – he's still in shock. I mean, he fucking died, Al! I don't know what to tell him, and I'm afraid he's not gonna listen to reason anymore. Not after Amanda."

The Legend sighed. "Have I ever told you what Steve was like when I first met him?"

Zoey shook her head.

"Back in 2001," Al explained, "I was still caught up in all the anger and hatred after Occupation Day. I was the primary squad leader for the HEXterminators – John and Marcus didn't have much in terms of organization in those days. We basically met up three times a week in a warehouse to discuss our plans over a bottle of JD or Smirnoff…the Miscreants weren't as involved with our operations as they are now. In any case, one night, I made a plan to go after this one Rosechu I'd been tracking for a while. I knew she had just hatched a Sonee, and I was going to see if I could take her out and bring back the little shit so we could open it up for fun."

Zoey stared at her former commander interestedly. She had never heard this story before.

"I camped out on the roof of her apartment," continued the Legend. "The next morning, I saw her leaving, so I climbed through the window to see if I could get that Sonee. Just my luck, she took the little furfag with her. So I followed them through the streets, all the way to Upper Central. She goes into this new building that I assume is some sort of daycare center, and just for the hell of it, I just waltz on in after her. She didn't know I was PVCC, and frankly, she didn't care." He smiled. "I go inside, and lo and behold, there's this giant sign, all rainbow-colored and pretty. It said, **Laughyland: Where All Babies Are Free To Hug And Play…NO HOMOS!"**

"Laughyland…" breathed Zoey. "I thought…wait, so that…that was all _real_?"

"Yep," chuckled Al. "I get in, and these two guards stop me. Of course they let the Rosechu in, no problem. I said I was lost, and asked what the place was. They told me the place used to be a pet store, but after Occupation Day, Chandler had it converted into a nursery for the chus to store their Sonees and Roseys while they were out zapping or shopping or fucking or whatever. And just like that, something clicked inside my head. I waited until the Rosechu had dropped off her Sonee, and then struck up a conversation with the guards. They hated their job, they hated the chus, they hated Chandler, and they hated having to protect the retarded little maggots day after day. It was only a matter of letting them know about the PVCC. After that, they were more than eager to join up with the resistance. They were both Hispanic, and cousins, you see. One of them was Joshua Martinez, and the other was-"

"Nick…" Zoey's mouth dropped open slightly. "Holy mother of fuck."

"I know, right? Funny how stuff sometimes just works out better than you think it would."

"So what happened then?"

Al took another swig of vodka. "Well, since Josh and Nick didn't want anything more to do with Laughyland, they all but handed me the keys then and there. I went in. The sight that greeted me brought tears to my eyes. There were Sonees and Roseys everywhere - countless numbers of them, frolicking and playing all over the brightly colored nursery. Some were playing hide and seek, laughing with glee as they waddled around looking for a place to hide. Some were eating snacks over at a table. Some were playing with toys, clapping their little armstubs together at the fun that they were having. Some were watching _Mary Poppins_ on the television screen, the colors and sounds making them stare up in awe. Some waddled around, giving each other hugs and kisses, just to make their little friends squeal in delight. The youngest of them were just simply looking around, making curious baby noises as they examined the bright colors. It was truly a paradise for the little infants. Just waddling and playing, laughing and eating, hugging each other while they embraced the fun-loving atmosphere."

The Legend smiled widely…very widely. "I knew then that this was my place, my time. This is what I was destined to do. This was truly a heaven meant for me."

"And you killed them. You killed them all by yourself," Zoey finished, awestruck.

"Not by myself, no," Al corrected her. "I had some help from a pair of Dobermans I found caged in the back. By the time I was through with them, only four were left – a Sonee who had part of his head crushed in, a Rosey that I stitched a Sonee's skin onto, another Rosey with no limbs, eyes, or tongue, and finally, that first Sonee, the one whose mother I'd been following in the first place. Him, I kept alive. I named him my Vice-Chairman of the Sonee's Democratic-Republic of Laughyland…it's a long story. In any case, Nick and Josh were witnesses, and soon enough, the PVCC claimed responsibility for what I did to the babies in that nursery. And before you know it, everyone's calling me the Legend." Al swished around the vodka in his bottle. "The Alcoholic Legend, more like. This whole drinking problem started after Desert Storm, you know."

"How does this have anything to do with Steve, though?"

"Well, it was Laughyland that inspired him to join up with us, really," said Al. "He was working for an underground political journal called the _Miscreant_, and he was the first reporter on the scene after Walsh tipped off the paper's chief editor, Vivian Gee. That turned out to be a mistake, since Steve was already on the blacklist for some articles he'd written about Chandler. He got put under house arrest, and seeing as how I'd already helped the Martinezes into our little organization, I figured that this kid deserved a shot at working with a gun instead of a laptop. I went to Jason Kendrick Howell, and we put together a little team of homewreckers to bust him out. You should've seen it – we had this Humvee with a battering ram on the front…"

Al paused. "Sorry, I'm getting all nostalgic now. Anyway, Steve joins up, Vivian starts working with Walsh as an intelligence officer, and the group of administrators becomes the Miscreants. Point is, I went out of my way to rescue Steve, not because I thought he earned a second chance, but because after Laughyland, I needed to find someone who was as enthusiastic about killing Sonees and Roseys as I was. I needed someone who flat-out despised these little shits, someone who wanted to see them all wiped off the face of the earth. You see? I _made_ Steve Morrison."

Zoey narrowed her eyes. "Back then, not many people were paying attention to Sonees and Roseys, were they? They didn't know about the feral swarms, or how fast the chus bred?"

"Nope," replied Al. "And because of Laughyland, everyone in CWCville finally got to see the little shits for what they are – spoiled, pathetic, and lacking any sort of empathy whatsoever. And as the weeks and months passed, I taught Steve to channel his rage into energy, in the hope that one day, he'd take my place as squad leader. Both John and Marcus were KIA in late 2001, and I took over as commander of the new Honey Badgers squad. Now Steve was looking up to me as a mentor, and there wasn't much else I could do. We had many adventures together, him and I…"

The former Manajerk's voice trailed off, and for a moment, Zoey thought he had simply passed out from the vodka. Before she could say anything, though, Al spoke up suddenly.

"Zoey…is the reason you're asking me about Steve…is it because you're in love with him?"

The Jerkop stiffened in alarm. "What?"

"You've always been his friend, Zoey," the Legend continued. "I know you two are close. And now he's going to need you more than ever. Steve is unstable. He needs someone to tell him when he's gone too far." He stared at her through the visor of his mask. "Can you do that?"

The squad leader remained silent, nervously biting her lip. At the far end of the garage, the outer doors slid open with a mechanical rumble, revealing two Punislavs approaching from the gate.

"He's my friend, Al," she answered at last. "I'm not in love with him. I might've been, at one point, but I'm not so naïve anymore. Kevin and Allie… I know they're good for each other. Jexis and Matt look like they're going the same way, too. Amanda and Nick might've even had time to grow their relationship if…" She sighed. "Damn it, Al, it's all fucked up now."

Al didn't reply. Finally, he picked up SUZI and handed the little combat drone to Zoey. "Here."

"Wait, what?" The Jerkop stared in disbelief as SUZI hopped into her lap and delivered a firm hug to her waist. "Al, what are you doing? She was assigned to _you_."

"What am I gonna use her for at the Library?" the Legend replied. "She's better off here, with all of you." He rose and began assembling the bags as the Punislavs pulled up. "Looks like my ride's here. SUZI, you're gonna stay with Mommy now. I'll come and visit you soon, okay?"

"_OhhhhhkaaaaAAAAaaayyy…"_ sighed the LIESA unit, and waddled over to Al's leg. _"I got lots of new friends to play with until then, anyway!"_ Leaning forward, she wrapped her hydraulic armstubs around his ankle and hugged it. _"Thank you for having me to help you. I had fun. I…"_

Al groaned. "SUZI, please don't say it."

"…_love yooOOoouuu,"_ finished SUZI. A digital tear formed in her eye-screen. _"Bye-bye!"_

"Bye-bye, SUZI," Al replied warmly, and turned to Zoey. "Take care of her. If you could…" He leaned toward the squad leader's ear and whispered something, then nodded. "Don't tell her."

"Deal," chuckled Zoey. "You're something else, Al. I'm gonna miss you. Have fun at Asperpedia." She stood up. "Come on, SUZI. Let's go find you some Devil Trolls to play with."

"_YAAAY!"_ squealed the robotic Rosey, and hovered up by Zoey's shoulder. _"DEVIL TROLLS!"_

Al watched the Jerkop and her new sidekick walk back across the garage for a few more seconds, then turned and headed for the waiting Punislav. It was time to say goodbye to Menchi-Nasu and his old comrades at last. It wasn't the end – just the start of a new cycle for the Legend. He couldn't wait to see what the Asperpedia Labs had in store for him.

And as for the Honey Badgers, there was no need to worry. Al was fairly certain that Steve had planned out a few interesting assignments to keep them busy until the next offensive began.

* * *

**July 12th, 2008, Menchi-Nasu, Honey Badger barracks, 10:24 a.m.**

"Minnesota?" Kevin asked incredulously, staring up at Steve and Zoey as the other Honey Badgers crowded around to listen to the announcement. "Why the hell would Leary relocate them to Minnesota? We need the Asperchus _here_!"

"It's not a _complete_ relocation," Steve explained, handing him a sheet of paper. "Silvana only teleported Alec and the chus over to the Minnesota compound. Evan and Mao say that it's part of their rehabilitation and training program. They brought five feral Roseys for the next stage of Project Asperchu as well. Alec wants a stress-free environment – he thinks it'll decrease the possibility of total reversions like the one that happened to Blake."

"That traitor," growled Kuri under her breath. "We should've killed Bubbles while she was still out cold. Now there's probably a hundred more piranha-chus swimming around in the Abyss."

"Regardless of Alec's decision…" continued the Manajerk, ignoring Kuri's comment, "…Al is going to continue working at the Asperpedia Labs in the abandoned zone. He's been conducting some rather…interesting experiments on the specimens down there. Apparently there's this type of fungus called Cordyceps that infests the brains of insects, and he's trying to breed a new strain that only attacks baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. So far, it's not going too well."

"At least he's keeping himself busy," remarked Nick. "We haven't been out on assignment since the 8th. What happened to our whole 'all-out war' plan?"

Steve adjusted his eye patch. "Operating outside Walsh's knowledge isn't nearly as simple as I thought it was gonna be. Arceus, that little distraction Al pulled back in April to get Simonchu out to help us…that was _brilliant_. Maybe that's why the admins keep watching us so closely. In any case, they still want us lying low until the fallout from the June Offensive blows over."

Nick blinked. "So…when are we going out?"

"Tonight," answered Steve with a smile. "Mypoe wants to visit an old acquaintance, and I'm not about to pass up the chance to help knock off a Combo member. We're going after Punchy."

"Hold on, hold on." Kevin looked around the room. "I don't even…what kind of stuff would we be up against? How does this normally go?"

"Well, first off, you should already be familiar with the territory," Zoey explained. "Punchy's been running a whole drug operation out of Soup Hotel #4 after the city shut it down, and the rest of the Combo doesn't even know about it. Layla and Reginald are both in on it, so we might get an opportunity to put them down as well. - I'm still not clear on the details. In any case, we'll go over the assignment with Mypoe this evening, and she's even agreed to give you all a little tutorial in martial arts."

"We'll need someone back here to stay in touch with the administration if anything goes wrong," the Manajerk continued. "Sorry Nate, you're up."

"Aw, damn it," muttered the sniper. "Looks like you'll be shooting alone out there, muchacho."

"Oh, what a cruel fate it is to be freed from constant interruptions," Nick chuckled sarcastically. "Just kidding, amigo. I'll let you know if I manage to pull off any really good shots."

Kevin nodded slowly. "Soup Hotel #4 again, huh? Okay, sounds like a plan. Are we going in separate squads, or…"

"No, we'll just go as a single unit," answered Steve. "This is _big_. Heavy enemy concentration, lots of mercs, lots of chus. Load up for some intense shootouts. Serge, I'm looking at you."

"Is not problem," the large Russian man grunted. "Intense only mean more killing for Serge."

"Okay, then. Any questions?" Steve waited a few seconds before concluding his announcement. "Good. I'll see you all tonight. Zo, Kevin, we'll go over the plan in about an hour. Dismissed."

* * *

**July 13th, 2008, central CWCville, Slum district, Soup Hotel #4, 2:31 a.m.**

"What the hell happened up there?" Allie asked worriedly as she, Kevin, and Matt herded their group of shivering children through the loading bay in the back of Soup Hotel #4 towards the five PVCC vans waiting to take the former laborers to Slumberland. Up ahead of them, both Steve and Zoey were conversing with Vivian Gee over the radio, making their final report and attempting to explain why they had violated protocol for the dangerous assignment, while the rest of the Honey Badgers and some additional Jerkops from Slumberland helped the kids into the vans and buckled them in. Many of the little boys and girls were crying openly and hugging their rescuers, overcome with relief that they no longer had to labor in Punchy Sonichu's cartel.

Kevin picked up a young red-haired girl and placed her into the back of a van. "We breached the fourth floor and found them all working in some sort of drug lab. There weren't any mercs up there, only a chu overseers. Mypoe took out the Sparky and said she was going after Reginald."

"And you let her go in there alone?" Matt shook his head in bewilderment. "What the hell was Steve thinking? That's _Reginald fucking Sneasel!_ For all we know, he might've killed her and-"

"He's dead."

Kevin turned to see Mypoe approaching from the abandoned cafeteria. The blonde martial artist's clothing was spattered with blood, as was the silver baton clutched in her hand. Her face was now marred by several razor-like talon marks, and she was clutching a bloody wound on her chest, but other than these injuries, she looked to be in relatively decent shape.

"Reginald's dead," she announced, spitting out a mouthful of blood onto the asphalt. She held up a set of four bloody claws and a red bandana that had once belonged to the Sneasel and handed them to Kevin. "We need to get the kids out of here, now. Punchy knows we hit the Soup Hotel."

"Hold on, hold on. She's here." Steve pushed his way through the group of children and Jerkops, a look of stunned anticipation on his face. He held out the walkie-talkie. "Okay. Say that again."

Mypoe closed her eyes and sighed. "It's done. I killed him. Reginald Sneasel's dead."

There was a sharp intake of breath from the radio. _"Morrison, can you confirm the kill?"_

"Kill confirmed," Steve replied as Kevin handed him the claws and bandana. "We're bringing back a few souvenirs for Commander Walsh. Better wake her up – she's gonna want to see this."

"Guys," Kevin spoke softly, scarcely able to believe what his squad had just pulled off. "Guys, do you realize what we just did? We helped kill one of Chandler's elite. We just made _history_."

"Damn straight we did," chuckled Kuri, and wiped her tekko-kagi on her jeans. "So now what?"

Zoey smiled. "Well, we're not getting any sleep tonight now. Steve can handle the paperwork, so I'm thinking…"

* * *

**North CWCville, Red Light district, the Scarlet Sanctum club, 3:22 a.m.**

"CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG! CHUG!" shouted Jexis, Matt, Nate, Nick, Kevin, and Kuri in unison as Serge and Zoey each grabbed a third beer stein and clinked them together, then tipped them up and began gulping down the frothy amber drinks. Raucous cheers echoed through the entire bar from the packed crowd of Jerkops and civilians, all of whom were eagerly betting on which of the Honey Badgers would last the longest. So far, it was looking like Serge.

Before Occupation Day, the Scarlet Sanctum had been one of the largest and most prominent multi-gender brothels in CWCville, boasting an immense staff of male and female "workers" who catered to some of the wealthiest members of CWCville's elite. In the wake of the citywide ban on homosexuality and the mass shutdown of the Red Light district, though, the fear of EHPF intervention had forced the Sanctum's managers to seek out a slightly less illegal line of work – smuggling and distributing alcoholic beverages. A _lot_ of alcoholic beverages.

It was Kevin's first encounter with such an upscale black market establishment, and so far, he was having the time of his life. The Honey Badgers didn't receive many opportunities for recreational activities like Spring Break, but when they did, they certainly made the most of it.

"Well, we fucking _did it_, little bro," Nate mumbled, leaning against Kevin's shoulder in a half-conscious stupor. "No more Reggie. And we…we were there when all this shit went down…"

"Goddamn right, buddy," Matt laughed, and reached for his beer glass. He missed by several inches. "Son of a bitch, everything's moving all over the place. Kevin, I swear…if you let me eat another raw Rosey like what happened back in March, I'm gonna…"

"Dontcha worry, big boy," purred Jexis from the stool next to him. "I gotcha covered…" Her eyes were completely unfocused. To say she couldn't hold her liquor was an understatement – the medic was only eighteen and a lightweight by every definition. Two shots of tequila had plunged her into what could only be described as alcohol-fueled hypnosis.

A chorus of disappointed groans swept through the room as Serge let out a colossal burp and promptly collapsed forward onto the bar, snoring peacefully. Kevin, frankly, was stunned. The Russian's size alone would have normally been a red flag for any challengers. Then again, Serge had downed about eight vodka shots over the last half an hour, prior to starting the contest.

"You an' me now, muthafucker!" slurred Zoey, pointing at a mustached, long-haired Jerkop in the crowd. "C'mon! I just took out the Big Bear, Grandpa! Who's your squad, huh? I'll tell you who! THE SQUAD THAT DIDN'T TAKE OUT REGINALD SNEASEL, THAT'S WHAT!"

Gritting his teeth, the PVCC operative coolly withdrew the cigarette from his mouth and placed it in the ashtray on the counter. "Honey Badgers, right? I've heard of you guys on R-PAT a while back. What's all this bullshit about taking out Reginald Sneasel, huh?"

"He's dead," Kuri explained, and downed another mouthful of her cocktail. It was a custom mix to "honor" the dead recolor – blue curaçao liqueur with milk, coconut shavings for claws, and a slice of lemon for Reginald's large yellow ear. "We just got back from the op that killed him."

"Goddamn," growled the man. "One more furfag bites the dust. That girl there…she with you?" He pointed to Zoey, who by now had forgotten he was even there and was attempting to insult every single member of the crowd in turn. Amazingly, not one of them had punched her out yet.

Kevin turned around in his seat and grinned. "Yeah. That's our squad leader, Zoey." He held out a hand. "Kevin Shaw, secondary squad leader, Honey Badgers, Menchi-Nasu. This is Kuri."

"Harvey Adams, Sea Lions, ChinaTown," the Jerkop replied. "Call me Smoker. And lemme buy you all a drink. But if I turn on R-PAT tomorrow and find out you lied about that Sneasel…"

"WOO! Free booze! Bring 'em on!" yelled Jexis, who was now blind drunk after just two shots.

"No more for her, please," Kuri laughed. "And don't worry about Reginald. Not even Chandler can bring him back now." She sipped at her glass and stuck out her tongue, which had turned a rather interesting shade of blue. "Kevin, where'd Allie go?"

"Bathroom, I think," replied Kevin. He glanced at the clock. "Ten minutes ago. Why?"

Rolling her eyes, Kuri turned back to her cocktail. It took a couple of seconds for Kevin to piece together the incredibly obvious subtext of what had just happened. "Oh, fuck. Smoker, I'm gonna take that free round ASAP."

"Lady friend of yours?" the Sea Lion chuckled, and waved to the bartender. "Hey, over here. Yeah. Get the kid a Chandler's Third Date. I'm buying."

"You've gotta be fucking kidding me," groaned Kevin, and finished his beer in a single gulp. "What the hell's a Chandler's Third Date?"

"Special edition of a Long Island Iced Tea," explained Adams. He glanced at Kuri briefly, then looked back to Kevin. "Trust me, kid, you're gonna thank me later."

"I bet." Kevin glanced down to see his fingers shaking, and instantly gripped the edge of the bar to make them stop. The bartender placed a highball glass of orange liquid with a slice of lemon in front of him, complete with a straw. "Fuck it all. Here we go." Grabbing the glass, he took a long drink, staggered to his feet…and promptly passed out on the floor.

Kuri blinked. "_That_ was a Chandler's Third Date?"

"He'll thank me later," Adams repeated, and took a sip from his own bottle of beer. "So will you. We're at war, lady. You gotta keep your team from getting too lovey-dovey, or else the entire fuckin' organization falls to pieces. I've seen it happen. Not pretty."

"So you just…cockblocked him?" The Jerkop leaned down and pulled the unconscious Kevin back up into his bar stool. She sniffed the glass of liquor. "Wait a sec, what the hell was _in_ that?"

"Half a tablespoon of CWC Orange Soda and a few roofies," replied the Sea Lion matter-of-factly. "There's a reason it's called a Chandler's Third Date, missy."

"Hey guys." Allie pushed her way through the crowd and reclaimed her seat on the other side of Kuri. "Sorry that took so long – it was fucking _packed_ in there." She glanced at Kevin, who was now peacefully snoring with his head pressed to the countertop. "Wait, what the hell happened?"

"Uh…nothing. Know what, Smoker, I'm gonna take that free round too," Kuri stated hurriedly.

* * *

**August 8, 2008, north CWCville, Northern district, Menchi-Nasu HQ, 6:10 a.m.**

"Kevin? Hey, Kevin?"

"Mmmmfffffwazzup?" Kevin mumbled, still clinging onto his pillow and trying desperately to get another few seconds of sleep. Outside, the sun was just barely coming up over the eastern part of the city, shedding a faint orange glow over most of CWCville. Squinting against the glare, Kevin finally rolled over and blinked a few times. "Zoey?"

"Hey," the squad leader addressed him apologetically. "Sorry to wake you up so early, but I can't find SUZI anywhere. Any idea where she wandered off to?"

"Nope, sorry." Kevin lay back down and shifted around in his cot. "She's probably just playing with the Devil Trolls again. Leave me alone. I feel like shit. My arm's still swollen." He unconsciously rubbed the bandaged wound on his forearm where a skirtachuting feral Rosey had static-clung its way onto him and delivered a painful bite with its little sharp teeth. Needless to say, the Honey Badgers had had a rather delightful time feeding the baby chu to Sugar, one limb after the other, while Jexis sprinkled some salt into each new open wound.

"Okay." Zoey sighed. "I just hope she didn't go and get lost somewhere in the air ducts."

"Mmmmmmmmffffff. Leemee 'lone."

"Sorry. I'm gonna hit the shower early and go look for her some more. I'll be back for briefing."

Kevin closed his eyes and tried to ignore the pain in his arm. Jexis had cleaned the wound and given him enough antibiotics to keep sepsis from taking effect, but it still hurt like hell whenever he touched it, like a large cyst or boil. At least it wasn't as bad as the infection Steve had suffered out in the jungle. _That_ one had nearly killed the Manajerk.

Regardless of his injury, Kevin was soon fast asleep again. The alarm was set for 8:30, and he intended to get as much rest as he could to get rid of the infection. The last thing he needed was for a single Rosey bite to put him out of commission.

* * *

**Four hours later, Honey Badger barracks, 10:00 a.m.**

"…and if any of you see her, let me know ASAP," Zoey finished, and retreated back to her seat on the sofa next to Kuri and Kevin. "I mean, you all know how valuable SUZI is."

"Indeed," Steve replied, stroking his mustache as if pondering something. "Well, thanks for telling us, Zo. Now then, today's announcements. We've actually got a bit of an important assignment coming up tomorrow – running recon for a Devil Troll info strike on…uh…" He hurriedly ruffled through a sheaf of papers. "Here we go. Trident. No, Tripod. It's a data storage facility in Lower West, about three blocks from AnneWeston Elementary. Unfortunately, we can't hit the school afterwards. Too many civilian kids and EHPF there."

Kevin shuddered. He still hadn't forgotten that little girl in the Feeding Day pile. Suddenly the idea of hitting AnneWeston Elementary – a place literally brimming with defenseless homebreds - seemed a lot less appealing if the human children were being guarded by Sonichu officers.

"In any case, Tripod." Steve passed out a stack of manila folders filled with schematics and floor plans of the building in question. "This could very well end up being the single biggest strike against the chu population and the loyalists since Mypoe killed Reginald. For the most part, we won't be doing anything in terms of combat, sadly. If anything, Nick and Nate, you'll get the most action. This is going to be a quick operation – we set up on top of the office building south of Tripod, you two take out any merc security inside, and then it's just a matter of waiting for the Devil Trolls to get in and start wreaking havoc on everything."

Kuri grinned. "Sounds good. Anything with Devil Trolls…color me excited."

"I swear, your obsession with them kind of disturbs me," the Manajerk commented. "In a good way. Actually, that doesn't make sense. Forget it. Anyway, it's a simple mission: low risk, high profit, home in time for dinner. Sound good to everyone?"

The Honey Badgers nodded and murmured their assent. Satisfied, Steve turned and headed for the door, doing his best to stifle a huge grin.

"Okay, hold it right there, Steve!" Zoey rose to her feet, an annoyed scowl on her face. "Get back here! You're hiding something. What the hell did you do with SUZI?"

"I did _nothing_, Zo," the blond Jerkop insisted, not even trying to conceal his smile anymore. "I just…well, I think you ought to see for yourself." He raised an arm above his head and knocked twice on the ceiling. "Okay, SUZI, come on out!"

"_YAY! WHEEEEE!"_ SUZI popped out of an open vent and hovered over to Zoey, who grabbed the little combat drone and hugged her in relief. Kevin could swear there was something a little different about the robotic Rosey…something he couldn't quite put his finger on. For the most part, SUZI looked just like a normal LIESA unit, but there seemed to be something on her back, something that resembled a little metal backpack or jetpack or…

"SUZI," continued Steve. "Show Mommy your new gear."

The LIESA giggled and activated her skirt repulsor, jetting out of Zoey's hands and into the air where all of the Honey Badgers could see her. A rasping shriek of metal on metal sounded from the little robot, and as Kevin watched, a pair of what looked like steel bat wings unfolded from her back. The edges of said wings were bladed, and appeared to be motorized as well, providing SUZI with greater stability and flight control in midair. To top off the transformation, two radio antennae sprouted from the tips of her ears, and a little USB cord dropped down from the bottom of the "backpack".

"No," breathed Zoey as Steve beckoned to SUZI and held out a little green, blue, and tan costume. "No, you didn't. YOU DIDN'T."

"Friends, Jerkops, countrymen," announced the Manajerk, pulling the cloth layer over each of the LIESA unit's extremities. "I give you…Devil Troll SUZI."

"_Heeheehee!"_ squealed SUZI, and did an enthusiastic loop in midair. _"I got HAAAAAAX powers now! The nice Satan lady and the PINGAS guy gave me all these toys of FUUuuuUN…that KILL THINGS! Wanna see? I can has target practice? PLZ? PLZ? PLeeeEEEEEEeeEASE?"_

"No," Steve said bluntly. "No laz0rs in my barracks. You want to fire them, you go outside."

SUZI made a little _pfffttt_ noise and crossed her stubs. _"Doesn't matter, I got TROLLIN' powers."_

"So…we're sending her in with the other Devil Trolls?" asked Zoey tentatively. "Steve, I don't know about this. What if something happens to her? I mean, you saw how easily they go down-"

"Please." Steve rolled his eyes. "We'll have taken out more than enough of the merc guards by then. It's gonna be a walk in the park. Worst case scenario, some overpowered chu just comes out of nowhere and just kills every single Devil Troll all at once. And that's about as likely to happen as Chandler getting out of the Time Void tomorrow."

* * *

**August 9, 2008, west CWCville, Lower West district, Terrah Nova apartments, 12:50 p.m.**

"Good breach, good breach," Zoey announced as Kevin and Matt quickly dispatched the surprised Sonichu and Rosechu with a pair of silenced headshots from their Beretta pistols. "Clear. Nate, Nick, get in here. Set up in the windows, we'll take care of the babies." Scanning the apartment briefly, she knelt beside the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon couple and checked their pulses, then rose to her feet and nodded to the two Jerkop snipers who had just entered the room.

"Quick and quiet. I like it," commented Matt. "How's it look from there?"

"We've got a great view of most of the southern side," Nick replied, and set his backpack by the first window. "It's not gonna be too windy today, but watch the flags in case it picks up, Nate."

"Got it." Nate propped his rifle against the second window and began screwing on a silencer.

"Okay, we're good," said Zoey, and gave Kevin and Matt a thumbs-up. "Go find the rest and put 'em down. If we're lucky, the little shits'll be asleep, but you don't need to worry about sound."

Kevin nodded. Terrah Nova was a primarily chu-occupied apartment building, and as such, the owners had been forced to soundproof the walls to dampen the shrill cries of the homebred baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon that now resided within the skyscraper. They had been installed as safety measures to keep the larvae from annoying other chu families, but now, their only purpose was to mask the Honey Badgers' presence while Nick and Nate carried out their support mission for SUZI and the other Devil Trolls. The Tripod facility sat a block away, disguised as a large unprotected warehouse. But from what the Jerkops had read in their briefing, it was anything but.

"We've got loyalists," Nick reported, peering down into Tripod through the scope of his rifle. "Yeah, I see them. Looks like they've only got about four guards on this side…that would make it…about three squads total. It's not gonna be easy, but they should have enough time to sneak in once we take down the outer guards. Let's just hope they didn't post any counter-snipers."

"Pick your targets and wait for clearance," instructed Zoey. "Kevin, Matt, hurry up."

"Right." Matt checked his Beretta and crept to the nearby doorway. Reaching out, he grabbed the knob and turned it quietly, then pushed it open to reveal a king-sized bed. "Clear. This must've been their bedroom." He pointed to the dead lovehogs. "Kevin, you can take the next one."

Cautiously and quietly, Kevin moved down the hallway to the next door and repeated Matt's silent entry. A teenage Rosechu sat on her bed facing the wall, chattering endlessly into a horribly-decorated pink cell phone.

"Uh huh. Yeah, like, I am, like, _so_ excited about the school dance tonight, like, Mom just bought me this _totally_ awesome new dress and Cheri is, like, _so_ jealous because she can't, like, go because, like, she's still a Rosey and that is _totally_ not cool with the-"

Kevin rolled his eyes, raised the silenced pistol, and shot her in the back of the head, smashing the cell phone into a shower of bloody pink plastic pieces and killing the Rosechu instantly. There would be no school dance for her, and certainly no future opportunities for her to spawn any chu babies. The Jerkop quickly scanned the room, then closed the door and followed Matt to the last one. The apartment held at least _one_ Rosey, they knew that for sure.

"_Menchi-Nasu to Honey Badgers, Infobomb is a go,"_ announced Joseph Herring over the radio. _"I say again, Infobomb is in effect. Sharpshooters are now clear to engage. Open fire!"_

"Take 'em out," Zoey ordered from back in the living room. Kevin heard four suppressed rifle shots ring out in rapid succession, and smiled as the squad leader reported four targets down. Spurred on by the good news, he made his way up to the final door and opened it, revealing…

"Heh. Jackpot," Matt chuckled as he stepped through the doorway and surveyed a large room filled with toys, games, candy wrappers, two beds, and a crib. Snoring peacefully in the beds, a Sonee and a Rosey lay fast asleep with big happy harelip smiles on their fuzzy faces. The crib held another chu larva – a tiny five-inch Sonee that looked as if it had only hatched a week ago.

Kevin grinned and pointed to the crib. "Dibs."

* * *

**2 miles above the Tripod Filing Facility, 12:52 p.m.**

Flapping her wings like a little bat made of cloth and circuitry, SUZI whirled through the air and squealed happily as her blue eye-screens flickered with static. The high altitude was affecting her sensors, but the thin chilly air and direct sun exposure was better for her cooling system and the solar cells built into her wings, giving the hyperactive LIESA an extra energy boost. Around her, the other Devil Trolls were acting in a similar manner, giggling and playing with each other while they waited for the final attack order to be broadcast from Menchi-Nasu.

"_HI THERE!" _SUZI glided over to a group of cavorting Devil Trolls and waved gleefully.

"_ERMAHGERD!"_ one of the female LIESAs replied, and waved back. _"ME GUSTA!"_ The other Devil Trolls looked up and exclaimed their own greetings, then turned back to whatever they were doing. SUZI flapped forward to see that the saboteur drones were playing with a sizeable yellow, pink, and grey object, shoving it back and forth in midair while the thing let out muffled squeals of pain and misery, and occasionally a sloppy _PPPPFFFFHHHHTTTT_ sound.

Upon closer inspection, she realized that the mysterious UFO was actually a single Sonee and two Roseys, stitched together mouth to anus and mounted to a light aluminum frame with four propellers keeping them airborne. A series of cameras had also been attached to the frame, along with several solar panels and surveillance devices. The only form of identification was a line of words along the side of the contraption –** The Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede**.

Bemused, SUZI dropped down below the UAV and stared at the Sonee at the front of the trio, waved, and poked it in both of its panicked, reptilian eyes. A low rumbling emanated from the baby chu's stomach, followed by another splattering_ PPPPFFFFHHHHTTTT_ as it reflexively emptied its bowels into the first Rosey's mouth. Unable to tear itself away, the little pink Electric Hedgehog Pokémon could only writhe and struggle as her cheeks ballooned with filth. SUZI merely giggled and flapped away, but not before uploading a few seconds of yaoi anime to her eye-screens. The Sonee immediately let out a stifled shriek and pissed itself, then began hastily swallowing and making hissing noises as it imagined the gay thoughts dissolving in its stomach.

Without warning, a speaker on top of the Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede crackled into life, briefly screeching with feedback before an irritated voice addressed the gathered Devil Trolls and SUZI.

"_Quit batting that thing arrrrround, you little rrrrascals!" _barked Dr. Ivo Robotnik. _"Now listen up and get a load of this! I've just been informed that the Trrrrrrrripod building's security is no more! Get down there and wrrrrrrrreck that place! You know what they say! The more, the me-"_

"_You don't say?"_ replied the LIESAs in one voice, and simultaneously crossed their stubs._ "Challenge accepted. AAAAAAAAAWWWWWWW YEEEEEEEAAAAAAHHHHHH!"_ Without waiting for Robotnik to finish his speech, each of the Devil Trolls folded his or her wings and plummeted into free fall, abandoning the Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede to its eternal fate. Amidst the _"LOLOLOL"_s and _"KEKEKEKE"_s of her fellow saboteur drones, SUZI swooped left and right with utter joy, spinning and whirling as the other Devil Trolls shouted advice to their comrades. Most of said advice consisted of suggestions to perform barrel rolls.

As the roof of the Tripod building rushed up to meet her, SUZI flipped up and spread her wings out to create drag like an improvised parachute, giggling all the while. Playing with her insane friends was just so much fun! One by one, the paratrooper Devil Trolls landed on the roof and scurried into the nearest air duct, while SUZI toddled off by herself and blasted the maintenance door open with a rattling burst from her dual stubguns. Without the normal Devil Troll program installed in her mainframe, her preset sabotage mission was pretty much useless.

The interior of Tripod Filing was rather bleak in terms of decoration. Most of the building's upper level was just a simple corridor lined with security offices and control rooms, all of which surrounded a massive storage room in the center of the warehouse. This was where the Devil Trolls were headed – the greatest cache of Chandler's personal data, scanned artwork, and high-security passwords outside of the Shopping Center's own CWCipedia Archive.

"_One does not simply waddle into Tripod!"_ squeaked the Devil Troll that SUZI had waved to as she flew through the open maintenance door to join her comrade. _"If you know what I mean."_

The two LIESAs flitted from shadow to shadow, staying out of sight of the occasional mercenary guards who patrolled the corridors. The loyalists still hadn't realized that their outer security had been breached, and that by now, dozens of Devil Trolls were scampering through the air ducts and passageways of the massive storage facility. From a wireless exchange of information, SUZI now knew that her new friend's name was ERMA, and that she had two merc and ten baby chu kills to her record. SUZI's killstreak was far more impressive in terms of Sonees and Roseys, but dispatching a loyalist was quite a bit more difficult than a larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. She hoped she'd get the chance to add a few mercenaries to the record.

"_Loyalists,"_ whispered ERMA, and gestured toward what looked like an adjacent lounge room containing at least a dozen men and women in riot gear and Kevlar. _"Loyalists everywhere."_

SUZI nodded silently. Ahead lay an entrance to the main storage room, guarded by a single merc with a shotgun. There wasn't much that could be done in terms of stealth, so both of the Devil Trolls decided to look for another way in. Around them, the distant sounds of flapping wings and scurrying stumpfeet heralded the presence of the main pack of saboteurs.

ERMA placed an armstub on her cheek and thought for a few seconds. _"Not sure if better to fire laz0r now…or wait for HAAAAAAX. This rustles my jimmies."_

As if on cue, the deafening blare of an alarm blasted through the facility, startling the guards and giving the two LIESA units the opportunity they had been waiting for.

"What is it? What's going on?" yelled one of the men in the lounge as he scrambled to retrieve his shotgun. "Holy shit, is it Juliets? Are we under attack?"

"_We got a breach!"_ another merc in full armor and a gas mask shouted, and waved to the other loyalist soldiers. _"Shotguns! Grab shotguns and watch the vents! Delta Tango! Delta Tango!"_

"_I got an idea,"_ SUZI suggested, and picked up ERMA. _"We're gonna laz0r-ram the door!"_

"_My body is ready,"_ the LIESA replied, retracting her mouthguard as SUZI fired her repulsors and jetted out of the shadows with her Devil Troll comrade clutched in her armstubs, straight toward the door and its unsuspecting mercenary guard. _"IMMA FIRIN' MAH LAZ0R!"_

_SHOOOOOOOOOOOP! _The blinding beam of blue and white light seared across the hall and exploded in a colossal flash, barely missing the terrified loyalist as he dove for cover. Stunned, the man rolled over onto his back and aimed his shotgun at the source of the laz0r, but by that time, SUZI and ERMA had already blasted straight through the door, into the heart of Tripod.

* * *

**North CWCville, Northern district, Menchi-Nasu, command and control room, 12:55 p.m.**

"We just picked it up on the outskirts of the city, near the jungle," reported Vivian Gee as she hurried to her control station and pointed to a pulsing red dot on one of her monitors. The feed had been taken from the Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede drone, and was currently zoomed in on a patch of terrain just beyond the eastern wall. "We've got a huge energy spike, right over here, for no reason at all. It's confined to this one little space, though, so I'm thinking it might be…" She scratched her head nervously. "Mary, I don't know _what_ this is."

"Can you zoom in any further?" Mary Lee Walsh asked, leaning forward and squinting at the blobby patch on the screen. "How about the scans? Did you get a fix on its origin?"

"It's just coming up right now," Gee replied, and glanced at another computer. "Yep. There we go…wait, what?" Her voice faltered and her eyes narrowed. "That can't be right. Look at this. Is there something you're not telling me about the Dark Mirror Project, Mary? Is Graduon secure?"

"We shut that down after we trapped Crystal," stated Walsh. "The only remnant is the portable device, and it's still in my office with Graduon's staff. I just spoke to him a minute ago. Why?"

The intelligence officer pointed to a series of lines on a screen labeled **ANALYSIS**. "Because the energy reading we're getting from out there is an exact match for both the Dark Mirror and Graduon. Maybe someone managed to duplicate the technology?"

"Run another scan with that new energy sequence that BILLY picked up from Ivy in June," the PVCC commander ordered. "I still never got the chance to thank him for delivering that bag."

In the chaos of the June Offensive, it hadn't been too hard for BILLY MAYS to surreptitiously smuggle Ivy's duffle bag of valuable information into Menchi-Nasu via an OxiClean delivery truck. The contents of said bag had given the PVCC a critical edge in the war for CWCville, and had even led to their current sabotage attack on the Tripod Filing Facility.

"Okay, checking the new sequence now," continued Gee, and nodded as a second set of lines quickly assembled themselves to match the first. "Well, there we go. Perfect match. We've got a confirmed surge of dark energy at concentration levels one through three. But…why would this be happening now? The last rupture we had was the one in 2008, after Silvana rescued Ledger's squad. So either Graduon sent her back in there, or someone else's coming through from the-"

Vivian never had a chance to finish her hypothesis. Walsh had already plunged into a mad dash for her office, her face as white as a sheet and contorted with fear. It took another second for the Miscreant to realize just what it was that had terrified her commander, before it all clicked.

"CODE YELLOW!" she screamed into her microphone, startling every technician in the room. "ALL PERSONNEL, CODE YELLOW! ABORT THE OPERATION! ABORT! ABORT!"

* * *

**Terrah Nova apartments, 25th floor, 12:59 p.m.**

"WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" screamed Cheri Rosey, kicking her stumpfeet helplessly as Matt ripped her skirt off and tore it in half, then tossed both pieces into the trash. "WAAAAHHHH! DAT'S MINE! GIMME IT BACK NOW YOU TWOLL! NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!"

"Oh, shut the fuck up," replied the Jerkop, and began looping a piece of twine around the baby chu's flabby neck. "That's it! You're a good, polite little Rosey. You know how to keep your mouth shut. See, that's why your brother Sammy got the Prickly-Wicklies. He didn't listen."

Cheri let out a strangled wail and glanced toward the bloody patch of carpet where, just minutes earlier, Matt had pounded the older of the two homebred Sonees into nothing more than a small pancake of crushed meat and fuzz with little broken bones sticking out in all directions. Kevin had only seen his friend use the large wrench once or twice as a close combat weapon, but the display had more than convinced him of Matt's utter cruelty when it came to larval slaughter.

"Sonee! SONEE!"

Kevin looked down and smiled. The tiny Sonee was wriggling in his hand, trying to bite him with its toothless mouth and pushing its armstubs against his fingers. It had long ago expended its small supply of bioelectricity, and its defenses were now reduced to screams and struggling. The Jerkop wordlessly turned and walked right into the bathroom, flipped up the toilet seat, and dropped the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon into the water. It began flailing around, screaming and kicking and attempting to right itself as it drifted back and forth, unable to climb out of its porcelain prison. Smiling cruelly, Kevin placed his pistol on the sink and unzipped his pants.

"WAAAAAHHHHH! WAAAAAHHHHHH!" Cheri continued wailing as Matt slid the window open and placed her on the sill. The Rosey attempted to waddle back off the edge into her room, but before she could, the Jerkop's hand closed around her pudgy body, pinning her down. "WAAAAHHHHH! NOOOOOO! WAT AWE YOU DOIN?! WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"This!" yelled Matt, and tossed the little chu out into empty space. Cheri's shriek of terror was quickly cut short, along with the rest of her as the twine noose cleanly separated her head from her body. Both of the bloody pieces tumbled down through the air, finally coming to a halt when they smashed into the concrete. Matt peeked over the edge and looked through his monocular to see a cluster of pink and yellow blobs waddling toward the tiny bloodstain on the alley below.

"Lunchtime, you little assholes," he chuckled, and closed the window just as the familiar sound of a toilet flushing and a momentary gurgling shriek reached his ears. A few seconds of running water followed, and Kevin emerged from the bathroom, minus the tiny Sonee. Matt didn't even need to ask what he'd done with the baby chu – that much was obvious.

"So, how'd the experiment go?" Kevin asked with a grin.

"Well, it pulled her head clean off," answered Matt, and shrugged. "Can't say I was expecting any big surprises. My question is…did that little shit actually fit down the pipe?"

Kevin nodded. "Yep. Let's just say they're gonna have to deal with one hell of a clog now."

"That is just fucking _brutal_, man." Matt picked up his wrench and wiped the bloodstain off on the carpet, then pointed back toward the living room. "Let's go see how they're doing."

"…no, no, no, that can't have been the order," Zoey snarled into her radio as the two Jerkops entered from the hallway. Nick and Nate were still scanning Tripod for guards, monitoring the facility as the Devil Trolls continued wreaking havoc inside. "We've got this under control. They should be finished in just a couple of minutes. Tell them to delay the order – we're too close!"

"_This is a direct order from Walsh, Zoey!"_ replied Joe. _"Every single HQ is going on high alert! Whatever happened, Magi-Chan knows we're here! You guys need to get out of there now!"_

"Fuck it!" Zoey looked up from her walkie-talkie. "Right, everyone pack it up! We're aborting the mission. Something big just went down in Menchi-Nasu…I don't know what's going on, but it's important enough that Walsh just aborted Infodump. Get your gear together – we'll meet up with Steve and the others at the Battle Bus. Come on!"

"Wait. Wait, hold on," said Nate, and swept his Barrett's scope over to the right to see a small blue figure zoom up to the door of the Tripod facility and begin entering a password into the security panel. It was undeniably a Sonichu, but the markings on its neck…it almost looked like-

"Mierda," Nick gasped as he focused in on the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. "Dios…mio…"

"What? What is it?" Zoey drew her own monocular and pushed her way to the window, then froze. "Arceus…no…that's not…" Her mouth dropped open as she noticed something in the distance. "DOWN! GET DOWN!"

_CRASH!_ The window shattered just above Nate as a sniper rifle round tore through it, missing his head by no more than a couple of inches. Instinctively dropping to the floor, the frightened Jerkop rolled over to see that his brother, Zoey, and Matt had already done the same to avoid further shots from the loyalist counter-sniper.

"Nick!" shouted Zoey. "You okay?"

There was only silence. Looking back to the other window, Nate could see Nick lying on his back, frozen as if in shock from the sudden attack. Teetering on the verge of a panic attack, the Jerkop crawled hand over hand across the room toward his fallen comrade.

"Come on, Nick!" he panted, and reached to grab the Jerkop's arm. "Come on, Nick, you're g-"

Nick let out a strangled cough. A line of blood ran down his cheek from the corner of his mouth, and a rush of terror surged through Nate. There hadn't just been a single lucky counter-sniper. The whole operation had been a setup from the beginning. Magi-Chan had anticipated them.

"NICK!" screamed Zoey as the Jerkop pulled the injured sniper away from the window, keeping his hand pressed against the bloody hole in his chest to staunch the bleeding. "NICK, NO! NO!"

"He's gonna bleed out!" yelled Kevin, and unzipped Nick's jacket and the Kevlar vest beneath it to expose the grievous wound. "Zoey, call for a medevac! We need Jexis! Matt, Nate, help me get him into the hall! Nick, don't pass out! DON'T YOU FUCKING PASS OUT, NICK!"

"Hit my lung…" choked the sharpshooter, his face twisted with agony. "Need to…"

"Stay still!" Drawing his knife, Kevin slashed off a large piece of cloth from the dead Rosechu's dress and crumpled it up into a makeshift bandage, then handed it to Nate, who pressed it against Nick's bleeding chest. The wounded Jerkop's heartbeat had grown faint and ragged, and his skin was turning paler and paler with each labored breath. "Just hold on! Hold on! We'll get help!"

"Jerkop down, Jerkop down!" Zoey shouted into her radio as Matt, Kevin and Nate dragged Nick out of the door and into the hallway. Crawling on her hands and knees, she followed them and drew her pistol just in case Magi-Chan had stationed any mercenary soldiers inside Terrah Nova. "Steve, come in! Nick's down! We need Jexis up here, now!"

"_Fuck! FUCK! Zo, hang on!"_ yelled Steve. _"Get him to the elevator! We'll extract you from the lobby! Wait." _The Manajerk paused. _"Zo, something's happening in Tripod!"_

"No…" Zoey breathed as a deafening crackle of electricity echoed across the city. "NO! SUZI!"

* * *

**Tripod Filing Facility, 1:03 p.m.**

"_FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUU!"_ ERMA shrieked in fear as the spinning blue blur slashed through a group of Devil Trolls and reduced them to an airborne cloud of metal and cloth scraps. _"ERMAHGERD! OH CRAP! ERMAHGERD! IMPOSSIBRU! FFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUU!"_

Terrified, SUZI grabbed her new friend and dove behind a large filing cabinet, her eye-screens spasming erratically in a multicolored frenzy as the circuits in her CPU struggled to process this new and overpowered threat. Another broken Devil Troll smashed into the floor not two feet away from the hidden LIESAs, and only had enough time to let out a single _"What is this I don't even"_ before its eye-screens sizzled and went blank. Around the massive room, more mercenary soldiers and Devil Trolls were locked in combat, trading shotgun blasts and laz0rs back and forth in a shootout of epic proportions while the Sonichu intruder continued destroying the saboteurs.

"Huahhh…" the blue Electric Hedgehog Pokémon panted as he leapt into the air, leaving at least a dozen smashed Devil Trolls behind. More of the LIESAs swooped in to attack him, a desperate bid to buy their comrades enough time to finish infecting and corrupting the large computers and data storage devices in the warehouse. Whatever they couldn't hack with their USB tails, they laz0red. By now, most of the loyalist information had either been destroyed or else was beamed to Menchi-Nasu via the Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede relay. The Sonichu might very well have been able to prevent the massive data theft if he had simply concentrated his efforts on destroying the Devil Trolls attacking the computers and filing cabinets, but caught up in a heroic fervor, he continued battling the decoy LIESAs, all the while smiling victoriously.

Firing her repulsors, SUZI shot up into the air and body-slammed an incoming mercenary at top speed. The impact of being hit by a forty-pound steel projectile knocked the man flat on his back, cracking several ribs and giving the combat drone enough time to swivel toward another loyalist soldier and retract her own brand new mouthguard.

"_IMMA FIRIN' MAH LAZ0R!"_ she yelled, and blasted the mercenary straight through the wall. As the injured soldier beneath her feebly reached for his sidearm, SUZI drew back her hydraulic stub and punched him right in the forehead in a similar maneuver to that of a captive bolt gun being used on a cow. Instantly killed, the man collapsed, blood leaking from the hole in his head.

"_ERMAHGERD! FFFFFFFFFFFUUUUUUUUUUUUU! OM NOM NOM NOM NOM!"_

SUZI looked back to see ERMA sink her sharp little teeth into the blue Sonichu's arm, drawing blood. Before she could fly away to a safe distance, a gloved hand closed around her USB tail, and a single bolt of electricity seared across the little Devil Troll's body. Her anti-shock systems were unable to disperse such a powerful surge, and as SUZI watched in horror, ERMA's eye-screens flashed and faded. The reactive microfibers that formed her "hair" immediately stiffened into a defensive state – a razor-sharp blade that the drones could use as a close combat weapon.

"_NooooOOOOOOOoooooooOOOOOoooo oooOOOO!"_ wailed SUZI. Huge tears formed in her own eye-screens as she watched her friend's body go limp. _"WHYYYYyyyyYYYYY?!"_

A smug grin spread across the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's face as he whirled ERMA around by her tail like a sword, then leaped through the air and landed in the middle of a circle of Devil Trolls. In less than two seconds, the little group of saboteur drones had been cleaved apart, slashed into pieces by their own comrade. Panic spread through the LIESA units as more mercs arrived, reinforcements sent by Magi-Chan to aid in the defense of Tripod. The survivors rapidly scattered back into the air ducts, making their way out of the building and leaving SUZI behind. Their work was done, and what remained of the data was now too corrupt for the loyalists to use.

"Well, ah, dat was a real 'fairytale fight'…" commented the Sonichu, standing triumphantly with his hands on his hips as he watched the broken Devil Trolls burst into flame and explode in little fireballs. Reaching to a filing cabinet, he picked up a copy of _Brütal Legend_ for the Playstation 3 and held it up to show the loyalists. "Rated 'M' for 'Moof'; don't be a Moof or aloof, keep it 'E' or 'T' for your children, or, uh, or give viewer discretion or supervision during gameply. Even though I have pl…I have enjoyed 'Brutal Legend,' starring Jack Black."

"_M…Mayor Chandler?"_ a mercenary soldier, a sergeant, asked in disbelief as he and the remnants of his squad cautiously approached the Sonichu. _"Sir, is that you? Is it really you?"_

"Yes it's true; I have returned from tha Ti…from tha stressful, uh, situation I was forced ta endure while waiting for tha return to my Sweetheart from tha Ground-Up, Ivy!" sighed Chris-Chan Sonichu wistfully. "An' now dat tha Devil Trolls have been dealt with, we will finally get married like a real cou…a real True Love Couple, an' den we will go on our honeymoon an'…"

"_Hate to break it to you, sir,"_ the sergeant interrupted, _"but Ivy O'Neil was killed in a rebel attack two months ago. I'm sorry, Mayor Chandler. BILLY MAYS tried to save her."_

Chandler glanced at the floor and sighed again. "Ah, um…ohhhhkay… Well, uh, I must find my future wife, Lovely Weather. But first; tha Sonichu material must be saved!" He raised a hand and closed his eyes. In a flash of purple energy, the piles of corrupted data and files vanished, teleported across time and space to the safety of the Shopping Center's mayoral office. As the mercenaries stared in confusion, Chris-Chan Sonichu cupped his gloved hands together and conjured a sizzling ball of electricity - a Lightning Bomb with enough power to destroy Tripod.

"_What's that, sir?"_ asked another loyalist officer, a lieutenant. _"Sir, what are you-"_

"I, uh, I must make sure tha nasty Devil Trolls do not escape after TROLLING ME!" Chandler shouted, surprising every soldier within earshot. "Y'all should…y'all should get out of tha building before, uh, before tha Lightning Bomb explodes." He raised his hand and the crackling sphere levitated into the air, pulsing and rippling with immense amounts of destructive energy.

"_WHAT?"_ yelled the first mercenary sergeant. _"Mayor, we don't have time to get everyone-"_

"Chaotic Control!" yelled Chris-Chan Sonichu, and vanished in the blink of an eye.

"_MOTHERFUCKER!"_ roared the lieutenant. _"EVERYONE OUT NOW! GET OUT OF HERE!"_

* * *

**Terrah Nova apartments, lobby, 1:05 p.m.**

"DOWN! EVERYONE ON THE GROUND!" Kevin shouted, charging out of the elevator as the Battle Bus screeched to a halt in front of the apartment lobby. Raising the AK-47 to his shoulder, he took aim at a screaming Rosechu and gunned her down with a vicious three-round burst while Zoey busied herself by opening fire on another chu family and riddling the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon with a barrage of rifle rounds. "Nate, Matt, get Nick to the bus! COME ON! MOVE!"

"Arceus, Arceus, Arceus!" snarled Zoey in a panicked rage, and stomped as hard as she could on a Sonee that was trying to waddle away to safety. The little chu shrieked in agony as its spine shattered beneath her boot, but a quick shot to the back of the head silenced its wailing. "I swear, I'm gonna kill 'em all if they even fucking _touch_ SUZI!"

"JIMMY! NOOOOO!" screamed the Sonee's mother as her baby screamed and collapsed, dead. She whirled toward her husband and pointed to the Jerkops. "Get her, sweetbolt! Zap the trolls!"

"SHUT THE FUCK UP, YOU VAPID BITCH!" Zoey drew her pistol and blasted a hole in the Sonichu's head before he could even move, then lunged forward and buried the tip of her AK's bayonet into the small bundle of blankets that the Rosechu was holding. An agonized wail of "WOSEEEEEEEY!" split the air, but the enraged Jerkop shoved her rifle forward, impaling the tiny Rosey and its mother in one vicious stab. Two shots to the Rosechu's head quickly resolved the situation, but Zoey wasn't even close to being done. Drawing a frag grenade from her belt, she ripped the pin off and tossed it into a small stroller that held another baby Rosey, then kicked the entire thing straight into a Sonichu and Rosechu couple that were hugging each other in fear.

On the other side of the lobby, Kevin glanced up at the sudden explosion to see the lovehogs fly apart, their flesh torn asunder by hundreds of pieces of shrapnel. By now, any human tenants had already either hidden out of the line of fire or else had fled to safety, giving the Jerkops a clean path straight to the Battle Bus. As long as the Sonichus and Rosechus didn't try and attack them, they still had a chance of saving Nick. The sniper had already lost a lot of blood, and worse, he was now coughing up little red drops with every labored breath. If Jexis could fix him, it would be an absolute miracle.

The door of the armored school bus hissed open, revealing the blonde medic and Serge. Kevin's immediate relief upon seeing his friends again was quickly overcome by the urgency of Nick's situation. Aided by Serge's strength, Matt and Nate loaded the injured Jerkop into the Battle Bus and followed Kevin inside, while Zoey finished executing the last remaining Electric Hedgehog Pokémon family in the lobby. As a last act of cruelty, she grabbed a fleeing Sonee by its sneaker, hurried back to the bus and shoved the baby chu right in front of the tire so it couldn't escape.

"What the fuck happened?" Steve yelled, abandoning the driver's seat so Matt could take the wheel. "Zo, get in here! What happened to him?"

"Counter-sniper," panted Zoey as she dashed up the stairs into the bus and closed the door. "We were set up. Something went wrong. Steve…he's back. Chandler's back."

The Manajerk's eye widened in shock. "What? Did you see him?"

Zoey nodded and glanced at the back of the bus, where Kevin and Jexis were hurriedly setting up a blood transfer between Serge and Nick. "Steve, we need to get into that warehouse. Chandler's after the Devil Trolls."

"Son of a bitch. SUZI…" Steve growled, gritting his teeth in helpless rage. "FUCKING HELL! Matt, get us to Tripod, ASAP! FLOOR IT!"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-_CRUNCH!_" The Sonee was transformed into a red smear on the asphalt as Matt stepped on the gas and pulled away from Terrah Nova into the street toward the Tripod building, crushing the baby chu's tiny body beneath the weight of the entire Battle Bus. Cars honked and swerved out of the way, barely avoiding the massive school bus as it plowed on through the traffic jam, its front-mounted battering ram pushing aside the civilian vehicles as if they were mere toys. Kevin grabbed the nearest seat to steady himself while Jexis kept working on Nick. The ruptured lung would require intensive surgical treatment to fix, but she had at least managed to stabilize the injured Jerkop with the help of Serge's blood. Kevin collapsed into the seat beside Allie and hugged her, his heart pounding with relief. If they could just get SUZI…

A flash of purple light seared across the city and formed into a sheet of pure energy that rapidly spread down over the Tripod building, enveloping the entire facility in a dome. Staring through the Battle Bus's front window in shock, Kevin could see a few dozen Devil Trolls flapping away into the sky, while several of their comrades had been trapped within the dome. On the ground, only a few of the loyalist mercenaries had managed to escape in time. The majority were still sealed inside the psychic energy shield, pounding on the rippling surface with their fists and screaming desperate profanities as they tried to force their way through the unyielding wall.

There came another flash from the Tripod building, far brighter and more horrific than any blast Kevin or any of the Honey Badgers had seen before. A lightning-laced fireball exploded from the center of the shielded warehouse like some chaotic superweapon out of a science fiction movie, filling the dome with fire and arcs of energy in less than five seconds. Kevin heard Kuri and Nate gasp in shock as the trapped mercenaries vanished into the firestorm, along with the Devil Trolls who hadn't managed to escape the dome. The churning, blazing explosion continued for another few moments, then dispersed, leaving nothing but a large pile of rubble, scorched foundations, and several dozen blazing corpses of the loyalists who had died trying to escape.

Kevin felt a sick, cold hatred building in the pit of his stomach. He knew that the mercenaries held nothing but contempt for the PVCC and every Jerkop in it. He knew they had shot Nick, slaughtered countless operatives, and helped to carry out the Mayor's orders. But they were still human. And now Chandler had rewarded their service with nothing but burning, shocking death.

"SUZI!" screamed Zoey in utter anguish, pounding her fists against the seat in front of her as tears streamed from her eyes. "NO! ARCEUS, NO! NOT SUZI!"

"She could've gotten out, Zo!" Steve shouted reassuringly, and hurried to the front of the Battle Bus. "Matt, take us to the blast site! Kuri, Kevin, go with Zoey and see if you can salvage anything!" He pointed to the door as Matt pulled the bus up alongside the ruins of Tripod. "GO!"

"Be careful!" Allie called after Kevin as he rose from his seat and sprinted after Zoey and Kuri.

Outside of the Battle Bus, the destroyed warehouse loomed ahead of the Honey Badgers, while a thick column of black smoke rose from the wreckage. A large crowd of human and chu civilians had gathered on the outskirts of the blast radius and were now staring at the distressed and extremely depleted remnants of the loyalist mercenary platoon that had been all but destroyed by the explosion. Some of the soldiers had fallen to their knees in shock, while a few others were checking their fallen comrades for signs of life. The only figure who stood out among the cluster of blue and black-armored loyalists was Chris-Chan Sonichu himself, standing proudly in front of the smoking ruins with a smug smirk on his furry face.

"Well, ah, Tripod was weak in security, and it did not have…uh, it lacked tha support for Flash media anyway," Chandler announced to no one in particular. "Moving on…"

"_You killed them, Mayor."_

Kevin looked up as he and the two other Jerkops crept unseen through the ruins. A loyalist had stepped forward to confront the blue Sonichu, his voice shaking with rage at the loss of so many of his squadmates and friends.

"I did not, uh, I did not do that. I did not kill tha True Blue an' Honest protectors of CWCville," retorted Chandler. "Tha Tripod was not…tha Tripod had to be destroyed because of tha Devil Trolls! They were making it VERY stressful for me an' I do not appreciate dat at all!"

"_You blew up the entire building,"_ another merc snarled. _"Our friends were still inside."_

"Then, ah, then they should have been faster getting out of tha Tripod Storage!" the blue Sonichu exclaimed, nodding as if his explanation made any sort of sense to anyone but himself. "Tha trolls must have made dem not…uh, too slow with dere dirty trollin' powers!" He stress-sighed. "Now I gotta deal with all tha STRESS they keep givin' me an' dis is NOT helping ONE BIT!"

The loyalists looked on, stunned beyond words at the irresponsibility and self-centeredness of their supreme commander. Kevin was surprised to find himself feeling sorry for the mercenaries. They had been trying to follow Chandler's orders, and in return, their friends and fellow soldiers had been sacrificed just to destroy less than a dozen Devil Trolls.

"I will make sure an' give them a…I will make a memorial to honor dere bravery in tha face of trolling," Chris-Chan Sonichu continued, and smiled. "I think dat, I suggest dat y'all learn ta forgive an' move on. Tha Jerks at tha PVCC an' Mary Lee Walsh must be brought ta justice!" Without another word, he dashed off through the streets in a blurry streak of blue and white fur.

"Kevin…Zoey…"

Kevin looked back to see Kuri kneeling in the ash, surrounded by tiny pieces of destroyed Devil Trolls and cradling one of the LIESA units in her arms. The little Devil Troll's cloth costume had been scorched off, and its eye-screens were gently flickering from grey to blue and back to grey. Once in a while, it made a faint squeaking sound, but couldn't even find the energy to speak even one last meme. As Kevin and Zoey gathered around, the saboteur drone gave off a final burst of sparks, and went limp in the Jerkop's hands.

"Is it her?" Zoey asked weakly. "Kuri, is it SUZI?"

Kuri shook her head. A tear ran down her cheek and splashed on the Devil Troll's face, hissing as it touched the hot metal. "I don't know…there…there's dozens of them. All dead…"

"Don't move."

Kevin turned to see a single mercenary, a young, dark-skinned man with short hair and weary-looking eyes, standing on a piece of rubble behind the Honey Badgers. A SCAR-H assault rifle was clutched in his hands, and it was pointing directly toward Zoey's chest. The blood seemed to freeze in Kevin's veins as he realized just how easily the loyalist had snuck up on them while they had been distracted with the Devil Trolls.

"Don't move," repeated the man. "I don't want to kill any of you."

"You're going to have to," spat Kuri, and rose to her feet with her P90 in hand. "You shoot her, and I'll make sure you die slowly, you loyalist piece of shit."

"Please," said the mercenary, startling the Honey Badgers. "Please, just listen to me. I'm not going to report you, I'm not going to capture you, and I'm not going to kill you. I want to help."

Kevin drew back, surprised. "What?"

"I know. You don't have any reason to trust me." The man let out a long sigh. "My name's Ben. Benjamin Waters. I was…I mean, I still _am_ part of the Jenkin's Jinkies mercenary squad. But I can't do this anymore. Chandler's back, and I can't keep working for someone who's lost his mind to the chus. I've seen what they do to us…to you. I can't live like this, knowing that I've been helping to destroy this city."

Zoey blinked. "You're switching sides?"

"I have information." Ben lowered his assault rifle and dropped down to join the Honey Badgers. Instantly, three muzzles snapped to his chest as Kevin, Kuri, and Zoey raised their weapons.

"Put it down and kick it away," commanded Zoey. Once the mercenary had done as she had ordered with both the SCAR-H and his pistol, she nodded approvingly. "Very noble. Very kind. Very suspicious, though. For all we know, you're setting us up for an ambush. We ought to just shoot you on general principle, Waters. One of our squadmates was just…"

"I know. Please. I don't know what else I can tell you," pleaded Ben. Kevin could see a tiredness in the man's eyes – an expression that betrayed the immense mental trauma he had endured in his service to Chandler's cause. "My squad's been tracking yours. They sent me out to follow you. My…one of my squadmates shot your sniper. Is he…"

"No," growled Kuri, and pressed the barrel of her P90 against the loyalist's chest. "He's alive."

"We need to go," urged Kevin, pushing his squadmate's weapon aside. He stepped aside to let Zoey pull Ben's hands behind his back and fasten them together with a zip tie. "And you're coming with us. There's no way we're letting you out of our sight until you talk to Walsh."

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, administrator meeting room, 1:43 p.m.**

"We're facing a complete collapse of the entire resistance," Mary Lee Walsh snapped, pacing back and forth in front of the monitors as the other Miscreants looked on. "Chandler took out our Devil Troll swarm, and I've been getting reports of Jerkop casualties from the sniper support teams. Magi-Chan knew we were going to hit Tripod. The data we got back from the raid isn't enough to go on. We need to know where he's going to attack next, and we need to know _now_. I need someone on the inside. The last time we heard from BILLY was more than a week ago, but there's no reason to believe he's been compromised. If what that mercenary said turns out to be true, Menchi-Nasu's going to be facing an all-out assault within the hour."

"_So, full alert then,"_ Jason Kendrick Howell mused. _"Mary, do you think he might attack Alec?"_

"The only way Chandler could find Alec would be if he got through you and Beel first, Jason," answered Walsh. "How long did the last prisoner we sent you last?"

"_Tried a Thunderpunch right off the bat,"_ chuckled Howell. _"Beel doesn't like those. We're still cleaning the blood and fur off the lobby ceiling. And in any case, we've got traps in place if our mutual friend decides to go for 4-cent_garbage. But if anything, Mary, I'd be worried about you and your s…your allies in Menchi-Nasu. Chandler must be down to only a few options now as to where the main HQ is in CWCville. He's going to remember his high school days eventually, and when that happens, not even Graduon will be able to shield you."_

Walsh frowned. "Then let's just hope he doesn't."

"_The time for hope passed as soon as Magi-Chan pulled Chandler out of the Time Void, Mary,"_ finished the 4-cent administrator. _"Kathleen and I are going to start the lockdown procedures. If the first line of defense goes down, Clyde and Jack should be able to handle the rest."_

"I'm sending you Reldnahc as well," the PVCC commander insisted. "You'll need an Electric Hedgehog Pokémon for backup, just in case. Don't worry about us – we've got Wes, Simonchu, and Silvana. Stay safe, and let us know if anything happens."

Howell nodded and clicked off his video feed. Walsh waited another couple of seconds, then turned to face Liquid Chris, Kacey, Robert Simmons, and Vivian Gee.

"Are all the squads back from Tripod yet?" she asked concernedly. "How many Devil Trolls survived the blast?"

Gee glanced at the display tablet in her hand. "Only about twenty…twenty-one. We've got only two damaged ones left in the ruins, and one signature keeps popping up in the Shopping Center. Probably a glitch. In any case, we can always get Ivo to make more. As for the Jerkops, we just sealed off the outer gate after Ledger's bus returned ten minutes ago. Minimal casualties – just a few severe injuries from sniper fire. Two dead." She looked up. "Mary…out of curiosity, how would Chandler have found Menchi-Nasu?"

Walsh sighed. "I had my suspicions. I told Giovanni and Ivo to keep an eye on their personnel, especially after Blake went rogue. I didn't believe that stupid excuse for one second – that clone didn't just turn traitor after Bubbles sweet-talked him. Someone built a failsafe into his genetic code – a complete reversion of what he was created for. Someone gave him the potential to become a real Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. And until this morning, all I had was this suspicion."

Simmons blinked. "So…what changed your mind?"

"I got a call from Wilderness security at 3:30 a.m.," explained Walsh. Apparently, someone managed to hack the outer defenses long enough for a single person to be able to slip in through the west entrance. Of course, Robotnik locked the HQ down and had his Badniks scan for intruders, but there wasn't any need. No one was sneaking in. Someone had escaped."

"Son of a bitch," growled Kacey. "Schwartz."

The PVCC commander nodded. "He knew this was going to happen. But he couldn't give away Wilderness's location. No, he thought he'd just serve us to Chandler on a silver platter."

A red light flashed overhead, and an automated siren began blaring through the HQ. Vivian Gee's recorded announcement began moments later, warning the PVCC personnel of Menchi-Nasu that their outer security was under attack. Walsh pressed a few buttons on her remote, and the large projector screen descended and clicked on. Through the Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede's camera feed, the Miscreants could see a colossal column of yellow squad cars, transport vans, and entire platoons of Sonichus advancing through the streets toward the southern gate of the PVCC HQ. At long last, the might of the EHPF had been mobilized.

"Upgrade the alert from Yellow to Red," Walsh instructed, her face grim. "We're under attack."

One by one, the administrators filed out of the room, leaving their commander alone with nothing but the screen for company. When she was sure that they had gone, Walsh turned and stepped through the door to her office, closed it, and locked it behind her. Her stony expression immediately softened, and for the first time that day, she allowed worry to take hold of her.

"Come out, sweetheart," she called softly as she grabbed Graduon's staff and began searching the room, peeking under her desk and chair. "Honey, come here. I need to tell you something."

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, southern gate, 1:49 p.m.**

"_The evacuations to Slumberland will commence momentarily,"_ Vivian Gee's voice blasted out of the exterior PA speakers surrounding the fortified high school. _"Remain calm. All Jerkops on defense assignment, your orders are to hold off the attack as long as you can, then fall back squad by squad into the garage and extract through the eastern gate. The EHPF are going to hit that gate with everything they've got."_ She paused. _"Give them hell, Jerkops! PVCC!"_

"RISE! RESIST! REVOLUTION!" shouted the immense crowd of nearly one hundred and sixty armed men and women that formed the triple firing line of sandbags, Jeeps, heavy machine gun emplacements, and concrete barricades set up behind Menchi-Nasu's southern gate. As the roaring chant swept across the city, the ominous sound of marching footsteps and rumbling engines slowed, then stopped. Silence fell, broken only by the rushing of wind above the city.

Gripping his AK-47 in trembling fingers, Kevin forced himself not to think about what Nick was going through. The wounded sniper was still confined to the medical quarters, to be extracted out via the Battle Bus with the other Honey Badgers once Walsh sounded the retreat. As for the rest of the squad, Allie, Serge, and Matt – the heaviest hitters – had been placed under Kevin and Steve at the frontline, while Zoey took the middle with Kuri, Jexis, and Nate. Surrounded by operatives from thirteen different squads, the nine Jerkops had never felt more insignificant in their lives. This was a battle unlike any they had ever faced before – a last stand against a force of nearly three thousand motivated and eager Sonichus. Kevin knew that there weren't too many ways the battle could end that didn't involve heavy PVCC losses, but he still clung to a hope that maybe, just maybe, they could last long enough to retreat, and thus survive the onslaught.

"Many shock-pigs outside," Serge commented, gleefully spinning Baba Yaga's barrels around and around as he listened to the sounds of approaching Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. "Many more shock-pigs for Baba Yaga to play with, yes? Oh yes, my darling, _how_ you will play!"

"You are fucking _terrifying_, Big Bear," Matt commented as he nervously rearranged a line of five extra AA-12 magazines on the sandbag beside him. "Kevin? You okay, dude?"

"Fine. Never better," Kevin muttered distractedly, and looked over his shoulder, back to Menchi-Nasu. The shrieking sound of jet engines echoed across the soon-to-be battlefield, and with a flaring burst of light, the HQ's squadron of Crackder drones shot up out of their hangar and into the afternoon sky, then spun away towards Wilderness. One by one, the PVCC's assets were being shipped away, divided up among the other HQs across CWCville. Wilderness was to be the next main base of operations for Walsh and her lieutenants, while the Honey Badgers would reclaim their first home, Slumberland, once the transfer was complete.

Allie flipped her mask down and braced the heavy flamethrower against the wall of sandbags. Clad in her reinforced orange fire suit, the young woman looked more than ready to unleash the fury of Trogdor the Burninator against whatever Chandler might throw at Menchi-Nasu. Kevin would have loved to have given her one last kiss before deployment, but he knew it would have only clouded both of their minds. There was no room for hesitation here, or longing. This was war, and unless every Jerkop fought for all they were worth, the entire resistance would crumble.

"_JERKOPS, MAKE READY!" _Kacey Devoria shouted through her megaphone. She and Liquid Chris had volunteered as joint commanders of the defense, while Robert Simmons and Vivian Gee oversaw the evacuation inside. As for Walsh, Kevin knew that she was probably struggling to keep control of the situation at the moment, arranging transportation and discussing battle plans with the other administrators. There had been rumors that the PVCC supreme commander would be coming out to fight alongside her Jerkops, but at the moment, that seemed unlikely.

Kevin gritted his teeth as another feedback shriek sounded from beyond the southern gate. The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon had no idea how to operate megaphones apart from "pull the trigger and yell stuff at people", a flaw which had often given away their positions in the past.

"_ATTENTION, PVCC JERKS!"_ an aggravatingly whiny voice addressed the Jerkop defenders. _"WE HAVE Y'ALL SURROUNDED! PUT DOWN YOUR WEAPONS AND CEASE YOUR TROLLING ACTIVITIES IMMEDIATELY OR WE WILL ZAP Y'ALL TO THE EXTREME!"_

"Come get some, Sparkies," growled Kevin, tightening his grip on the AK-47. Neither Liquid Chris nor Kacey responded to the illogical threat. The HQ wasn't surrounded at all – the EHPF had only approached from the south, showing no sign of tactics or strategy whatsoever.

"They'll rush the gate all at once," Steve muttered. "Spin Dashes, probably. Once they get through, I want everyone firing until you run out of ammo. Kevin, keep sending grenades over the wall. Matt, Allie, take out any chu that gets within ten yards of us. The bulk of their army's going to hit us front and center, but watch the sides in case any spill over." He strapped on his white gas mask and rolled his head around, cracking the tendons in his neck. _"Here we go."_

_WHAM!_ The gate shuddered, and several dozen large dents appeared in its thick steel surface. Biting his lip, Kevin clutched the AK's grenade launcher and adjusted his aim so that the first shot would arc right over the charging Electric Hedgehog Pokémon and explode in the midst of the advancing army. Serge had set up Baba Yaga in the middle of their little patch of barricade, which gave him free reign to sow as much destruction as he could among the first wave of chus. And just in case the following waves were any worse, he had brought two more ammo boxes.

Another rumbling smash sounded from the gate as more and more Sonichus Spin Dashed into it, each one eager to prove his heroism to any Rosechus who happened to be watching on FQX. More and more dents appeared, and the thick metal panels began to buckle inward. It wouldn't last much longer. At the rate the EHPF were attacking, the final support would give in just…

_CRASH!_ As Kevin looked on with grim determination, the two halves of the massive gate swung open with a rusty squeal, revealing what appeared to be a rippling sea of yellow headspikes and black-tipped, pointed ears. Hundreds of Sonichus waited just outside, with hundreds more lined up behind them as reserves. And every single one of them was ready and willing to fight to the death to serve their beloved Mayor and their demigod heroes of the Chaotic Combo.

In short, the PVCC was staring down a yellow and black nightmare comparable only to a swarm of Japanese giant hornets. Hyperactive, electrically-charged, 5'4" Japanese giant hornets.

"_Hold fire,"_ commanded Steve as the other Manajerks and squad leaders passed on the message to their operatives. _"Walsh had a little welcoming committee set up for occasions just like this."_

Behind the Jerkops, the familiar ominous strings of Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" began to play from the PA systems of Menchi-Nasu. As Kevin looked over his shoulder, a strange sound, like the chopping of dozens of tiny helicopters, split the air, which was quickly followed by a cloud of odd four-rotored aircraft that rose up behind the school in a floating pink and yellow armada. Only when the objects passed close enough did the Jerkop realize what they were.

Its tiny engine shrieking, the first of the Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede bomber drones peeled off from the main group and descended rapidly, its trio of unwilling passengers struggling and kicking as they plowed into the dumbstruck army of Sonichus and detonated spectacularly. The massive fireball of igniting C4 engulfed at least a dozen EHPF, scattering any of the Sonichus unfortunate enough to have been standing within ten feet of the exploding fuzzy blobs. Caught completely off guard, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon advancing from the back could only unsuccessfully attempt to turn and flee, only to be caught in the next wave of thunderous blasts. One by one, the sewn-together Sonees and Roseys rained down like kamikaze planes in World War II, blasting immense holes in the tightly-packed infantry columns. Blinding balls of fire and geysers of detonating flesh and fur exploded through the streets, wreaking havoc and panic among the Sonichus as their comrades died around them.

A cheer rang out from the PVCC barricade as the last of the suicide quadrocopters swooped and burst through the ranks of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, killing the final few members of the initial attack wave that had broken through the gate. "Ride of the Valkyries" abruptly stopped, and only the screams of injured Sonichus rose to fill the silence.

Then, with a deafening roar, the second wave of EHPF infantry charged.

"_FIRE!"_ yelled Liquid Chris and Kacey simultaneously into their megaphones.

"_FIRE!"_ roared Steve, sweeping a hand toward the line of rapidly approaching Sonichus.

"_FIRE AT WILL! KILL THEM ALL!"_ screamed Vivian Gee through Menchi-Nasu's PA system.

The Jerkop battle lines exploded into a cacophony of gunfire, ranging from the near-inaudible pops of pistol shots to the low, stuttering drumrolls of the .50 caliber machine guns mounted on each of the rebel support Jeeps. Kevin squeezed the trigger of his AK-47 and braced himself against the barricade as Baba Yaga spun and roared beside him. The first twenty or so Sonichus were literally vaporized under the explosive barrage, their shattered bodies reduced to showers of red mist and gobbets of slimy flesh. Undaunted by the death of their comrades, the next group of EHPF zoomed through the gate and charged the line, their cheekspots crackling with energy.

"BRACE! BRACE!" yelled another Manajerk from further down the line. Immediately, most of the Jerkops dropped to one knee and ducked their heads behind cover to avoid the searing volley of Thundershocks. Out of the corner of his eye, Kevin saw a female operative fall backward, her mouth gushing smoke and her eyes burning from where the bioelectric attack had connected with her skull. Another two PVCC soldiers were struck and electrocuted in the first barrage, unable to withstand such a high level of voltage even with the added protection of their rubber boots and vests. At range, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon were pathetically outmatched, and the Jerkops weren't at all worried about a shootout. It was close combat with the chus that truly scared them.

Swapping out his spent magazine for a fresh one, Kevin flipped the AK's firing rate to three-round bursts and began picking off targets left and right, focusing his efforts on the Sonichus that Serge's violent barrage had missed. It was only an educated guess, but he estimated that about a hundred of the EHPF chus had been slaughtered in the preliminary bombings and the first assault, which left the PVCC just over 2900 more to kill. The chus just kept on coming, hurling themselves at the Jerkop lines like army ants with no regard for their safety or the actual combat effectiveness of their plan. No living Sonichu had entered Trogdor's range so far, but several yellow bodies lay against the sandbags, having skidded wildly across the battlefield after death.

"OUT!" Serge bellowed, ripping his first empty ammo belt free of Baba Yaga as the weapon spun down and ceased firing. Seizing the opportunity now that the minigun had stopped, another large cluster of EHPF burst through the gate, but this time, the next wave didn't stop and wait for the first one to be torn apart. Like an unending tide of spiky yellow fury, the Sonichus charged, some rolling themselves into balls to launch Spin Dashes at the embattled barricade.

"_Son of a bitch…HERE WE GO!"_ Steve braced the XM8 against his arm and began sweeping the weapon back and forth as it fired, peppering the ground and the approaching chus with heavy gunfire. Right on cue, Matt and Allie rose and fired simultaneously, just as the first balls of spikes smashed into the sandbag wall on the eastern flank. One Sonichu was transformed into a frenzied fireball by a sustained burst from Trogdor, while Matt unloaded three devastating blasts into another and ducked back down just in time to avoid being struck and mutilated by the dead chu's spinning upper half. Poking the AA-12 out again, he fired on another and smiled as the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon spun around and around from momentum, screaming in pain while it clutched at the ragged bones and slippery intestines where its pelvis had once been.

Kevin shot the chu twice in the head, then inserted another 40mm grenade and sent it arcing into the advancing crowd of EHPF. Without bothering to wait and see what kind of damage he had caused, he dropped his aim and shot the feet out from beneath a Sonichu, then swiveled to the right and emptied the rest of his second magazine into a pair of chus zipping toward the White Medallions. One of the stricken Electric Hedgehog Pokémon managed to pull itself another foot toward the barricade before Blanca Weiss put it down with a burst from her UMP 45.

With a sickening crunch and a sound like a buzzsaw, an airborne Sonichu spinning in ball form slammed into the Spikes of Blue barricade, blasting straight through the sandbags and shredding through one of their operatives in a cloud of thick blood droplets. The man's mutilated corpse hit the ground as his squadmates closed in around the breach, yelling vicious battle cries while they unloaded on the horde of chus. Despite a near ironclad defense, the PVCC operatives were being cut down one by one beneath the sheer number of enemy Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. On the western flank, a Jerkop from the ALBinos took a lightning bolt to the chest and dropped in a smoking heap while his comrades struggled to administer CPR. Two yards away from Steve, one of the Tomgirls was instantly killed when a Sonichu dashed right up to him and Thunderpunched him in the face, but a double shotgun blast from Lars McNulty quickly dispatched the chu.

The world had become a blur to Kevin, a grey and red and yellow and black blur that flashed before his eyes furiously, refusing to cease its assault on his senses. He had long ago lost count of just how many of the EHPF assault force he had killed, but it had to be somewhere in the dozens by now. Allie was keeping the Sonichus at bay with short bursts of flame while Steve reloaded his XM8 and Matt helped Serge link Baba Yaga's second ammo belt to the minigun. Glancing down at his watch, Kevin nearly felt his knees buckle as he realized that a mere twelve minutes had passed since the beginning of the Battle of Menchi-Nasu.

_Only twenty to go, _he thought desperately, and reached for another grenade.

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, command and control room, 2:11 p.m.**

"I want you out of here on the next evacuation convoy," Mary Lee Walsh ordered as Vivian Gee hurried from computer to computer, transferring their contents to a massive external hard drive that she had tucked under her arm. The other PVCC technicians had already left for Wilderness, along with most of the R&D staff. "If all else fails today, I need someone faithful to _our_ cause. I won't let this war be dictated by the ideals of fanaticism or greed. Make no mistake, Ivo and Giovanni _will_ try to take my place if I get killed or captured."

"That's not going to happen, Mary," replied Gee, tapping her fingers against her desk while she waited for the final download to complete. "Come on, come on! Mary, I don't see why you can't just come with us. They're holding off the attack with minimal losses."

"Vivian, you make it sound like the Jerkops are expendable," Walsh muttered. "They're anything but. Without Menchi-Nasu, we're going to need them more than ever for the campaign ahead."

"Speaking of which…" The intelligence officer handed her commander a sheet of paper. "We're going to have to try something other than the TMZ idea for Hedgeclipper. The camera drones keep getting recognized before they can even get inside 14 Brunchville. Mary, I don't see why we can't just airstrike the house and kill those three little abominations once and for all."

Walsh exhaled slowly. "There would be no point. The city has to see it happen. They need to see the Sonichu brats die. And if Ledger's team makes it out of here alive, I intend to keep the promise I made to them back in January. Mark my words, the family will die. Just…not yet."

"It's Morrison's team now," Gee reminded her. "But as long as we're on the subject of Ledger, I sent those new chemical samples to the Library for analysis. Ledger's research team was able to isolate a certain reactant in the mixture that wasn't there before. Mary, something's been added."

"Why, Vivian," sighed the PVCC commander, "did you wait until the worst possible moment to tell me this?" She glanced at the paper. "We'll talk about this later. For now, get to Wilderness."

"You should come too." The Miscreant looked over her shoulder worriedly as she stepped toward the door to the main hallway of Menchi-Nasu. "Mary…what about…"

Walsh's jaw was set. "I'll handle it. Just get out of here. Be safe, Vivian."

"You too, Mary," Gee replied, and hurried out of the room. "Both of you."

The door slammed. Walsh stood watching the aerial view from the Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede drone for another few moments, then sank into her chair. She knew that every second mattered to the evacuees, but at the moment, if the PVCC was to succeed, she needed to stay back, out of sight, as bait to lure the unsuspecting Chandler to his inevitable doom. If all went as planned, the city could very well find itself without a mayor before the sun set.

An electronic alert beeped on the side of the screen, heralding a call from Jason Kendrick Howell at the 4-cent_garbage HQ. Surprised, Walsh picked up her remote and pressed the **ACCEPT** button. A window immediately popped up, displaying the administrator on his throne, as usual.

"_We've got a problem, Mary,"_ Howell spoke, and for the first time in her life, Walsh detected a heavy hint of uncertainty in his voice. _"We were wrong. He's not going for Menchi-Nasu first."_

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, southern gate, 2:16 p.m.**

"_BACK! BACK TO THE SECOND LINE!"_ roared Steve, unloading an incendiary round from Origin into a Sonichu's face before it could fire off a Thundershock. The chu's pained scream was immediately cut short when its head exploded in a blistering fireball, but the Manajerk was already on the move. As more and more of the EHPF infantry zoomed toward the Jerkop lines, Kevin and Allie sprinted after Steve, keeping as low to the ground as they possibly could while Matt and Serge carried Baba Yaga back toward the second line of sandbags and barricades.

Kevin leapt over the next barricade just in time to avoid being hit by a vicious arc of electricity, then turned and helped Allie over as Steve reloaded his XM8. The Manajerk only seemed to have a pair of magazines left, and after those had been expended, he would be down to Origin and his kukri. Further up the line, Zoey and Kuri were helping three Tomgirls suppress the main attack force of EHPF. Through the chaotic din of gunfire and searing electric bolts, the echoing reports of Nate's Barrett rang out like thunderclaps, as the sniper picked off the Sonichus one by one. So far, he hadn't missed a single target.

"Anyone hurt?" yelled Jexis concernedly as she hurried over, firing off bursts from her MP5 into the spiky yellow horde. "Guys, we're running out of ammo! Save your shots!"

"Do not tell Serge to save Baba Yaga's wrath, tiny doctor girl!" snarled Serge, and slammed the minigun's tripod down behind the sandbags. With Matt's assistance, he had the massive six-barreled weapon mounted up in a matter of seconds. "BABA YAGA HAS NO PUNY LIMITS!"

"Just watch your ammo, Serge!" Matt shouted. "Kevin, how many mags did you save?"

"Two full, one on its way out!" Kevin hastily shoved Allie out of the way and sent a five-round burst tearing through a Sonichu's head and neck before the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon could shock her to death. The AK-47 clicked ominously. "One out! I'm down to my last two mags!"

The first line had fallen, and now the EHPF were swarming and leaping over it, straight into the second wave of fire from the PVCC. Even as the dead chus piled up across the southern gate and the battlefield, the horde continued to bring up fresh troops to take the places of their fallen. The Jerkops, on the other hand, were not nearly as blessed to have expendable soldiers, and each man and woman that fell to the chus was another crippling blow to the defense. Little by little, they were being worn down and battered apart. Fatigue began to set in, followed by fatal mistakes.

Kevin knew it wouldn't last. Even with enough firepower to take down Momma herself, Menchi-Nasu's defenders simply could not even make a dent in the massive army of Sonichus attacking from the south. By now only a few hundred EHPF were down, and their numbers just kept on growing no matter how many bullets and grenades the PVCC threw at them. The only advantage they held besides their reinforced position was the element of surprise, which had come in handy during the initial Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede suicide bomber attack.

But as the Jerkops would soon discover, their foes had several surprises of their own.

An ominously low rumbling sounded from beyond the south gate, followed by an immense and earsplitting shriek of metal and showers of sparks as something smashed its way into the left side of the gateway and through the fortified outer walls of Menchi-Nasu. Their engines roaring violently, the forward prows of two armored transport trucks peeled straight through the barrier, opening up a pair of new passages for the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon assault force. But what new horrors emerged from the hole were nothing like what the Jerkops had been expecting.

Two platoons of thirty Sonichus, all clad from headspikes to sneakers in custom-forged composite armor of Kevlar and steel, spilled forth from the cloud of smoke filling the breach and, unable to gain enough speed for Spin Dashes under the weight of their reinforced plating, began making their way on foot across the battlefield and toward the PVCC defenders. Kevin swung his AK toward the approaching chus and fired a tentative burst into the nearest one's chest, but to his immense surprise, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon merely stumbled backward a few steps, its breastplate scratched from where the bullets had ricocheted off. Undaunted, it raised an arm and channeled a searing Thundershock from one of the copper coils built into its gauntlets, striking the barricade and nearly killing the two Red Devils firing from behind it.

"What the fuck are those?" yelled Allie, quickly torching a chu before it could reach the line.

"_Looks like the Combo made themselves some shock troops,"_ Steve snarled, unaware of the horrible pun he had just created. _"Arceus, this is gonna hurt. Serge, give 'em a taste of Baba!"_

"AT LAST!" the huge Russian laughed insanely, and swiveled the minigun to face the oncoming elites. "SHOCK-PIG OPPONENTS WORTHY OF SERGE!"

Baba Yaga roared like a demon as Serge opened fire, spraying heavy bullets straight into the first group of heavy assault Sonichus while the other Honey Badgers focused their fire on repelling the main charge. Kevin nearly cheered with glee and relief as three of the armored Electric Hedgehog Pokémon fell at once, their bodies pulverized within their steel shells by the sheer concussive force of a sustained .50 caliber barrage. Magi-Chan must have had a hand in the training of the elite soldiers, though, because rather than attempting a heroic charge straight into the meat grinder of Baba Yaga, the Sonichus split up and dashed forward, forcing Serge to concentrate his fire on one at a time.

With a loud _whoosh_, an RPG round sailed overhead, trailing smoke as it curved down into one of the armored chus and blasted it into a scything storm of red-hot metal and bloody meat. Looking back, Kevin was relieved to see that several of the Jerkops in the third line had made their way up onto the beds of a few support trucks, and were now launching an explosive retaliation at the heavy chu infantry from their elevated firing platforms. For a moment, it seemed as if the PVCC would actually be able to hold off the coming storm of steel and lightning.

Then the EHPF's air support arrived.

"_INCOMING!"_ screamed Kacey. _"ONE O' CLOCK HIGH!" _Hastily swapping her megaphone for her M4, she raised the weapon to her shoulder and opened fire as something large and white hurtled down from above toward the besieged high school. Before the Jerkop defenders could react, Angelica Rosechu was upon the third line in a swirling, slashing fury, carving her way through three operatives and decapitating two more with a scything Steel Wing attack. Panicked gunfire from Kacey and the adjacent Jerkops drove back the white-furred Rosechu momentarily, but in the chaos, the EHPF ground troops seized the opportunity, and surged forward once more.

Kevin coughed through the smoke, frantically fumbling to insert a final magazine into his AK-47. His arms were nearly numb, and the new threats from above and below weren't doing anything good for morale. Looking around, he could see Kuri dashing back alone toward the third line, yelling a furious battle cry as she fired her P90 up at the circling white Rosechu. Zoey, Jexis, and Nate were falling back too, along with several dozen other Jerkops who had witnessed the attack. A sick surge of desperation swept through Kevin's gut as he realized the end had just begun. Menchi-Nasu was doomed to fall from the start, but now that the Combo were arriving…

"_Pack it up!" _shouted Steve as he clapped a hand to the radio headset in his ear. Around him, the other Jerkops were retreating, pulling away from the second line as they kept up a steady base of fire on the EHPF infantry. _"Honey Badgers, back to the garage! We did it! We're out of here!"_

"Fucking FINALLY!" Matt emptied a last burst of shells into a pair of charging Sonichus and helped Serge detach Baba Yaga from its tripod. The Russian Jerkop continued firing on the elite armored chus, making his way backward step by step as Thundershocks seared past his chest and head. Shouldering Trogdor, Allie drew her pistol and began firing blindly into the surging horde of Sonichus, many of whom had begun to trip over the bodies of their comrades that covered the battlefield. If anything, the last stand of Menchi-Nasu had not been in vain at all. Nearly four hundred dead chus lay scattered across the street, clogging the gateway and the main approach.

His last magazine empty, Kevin wrenched it out and slung the AK-47 over his shoulder, then drew his pistol and began firing alongside Allie and Steve. Fresh PVCC troops poured out of the garage to engage the oncoming chus, allowing the battered defenders to extract as many of their dead and wounded comrades as possible back to the safety of the garage. Foot by foot, bullet by bullet, the Honey Badgers fell back as a trio of S.A.V.s roared out from Menchi-Nasu and reconfigured into mech mode, adding some much-needed heavy autocannon fire to the frenzy.

"Goddamn, that was too fucking close!" yelled Nate as Steve and Zoey's teams regrouped inside the massive garage. Most of the Punislav transports had already left for Wilderness, ChinaTown, and Slumberland, but a handful of the brown Transformers and several pickup trucks and vans remained parked and idle, along with the Battle Bus. Around them, the other Jerkops who had retreated were grabbing additional ammunition, tending to their wounded, or else shouting to their comrades, no doubt relieved to have survived such a vicious assault.

Steve reached up and wrenched off his gas mask, wincing in pain. "AAGH! Son of a bitch, I think I got clipped by shrapnel! Jexis, check my back, upper right side! FUCK! FUCK!"

"You're good!" announced the medic as she grabbed the Manajerk's shoulder and pulled back. "Tendon injury! You gotta stop firing such long bursts – that XM8's gonna dislocate your arm!"

"Bite me," snapped Steve. "Zo, Kevin, we're getting the fuck out of here. Head for the armory and get everyone rearmed, then put Nick in the Battle Bus. I need to take care of one last errand." Tossing the XM8 to Jexis, he turned toward the nearest door to the main hallway.

"Wait, what?" Zoey hurried forward and grabbed the Manajerk's arm. "Errand? What errand?"

Steve stared at his squad leader in disbelief. "You think I'd forget about Sugar?"

"Morrison! Stop!"

Kevin looked toward the source of the call to see Mary Lee Walsh herself hurrying across the garage to the Honey Badgers. Her standard casual outfit had been replaced by a flak jacket and purple tank top with a pair of black combat pants. If not for her red horned headband and devil tail belt tassel, as well as the fact that Sugarplum Fury was trotting after her on a leash, he might have mistaken the PVCC supreme commander for just another operative.

"Commander Walsh!" Steve snapped to attention and saluted, as did Zoey, Kevin, and the rest of the Honey Badgers.

"At ease," Walsh ordered, and handed him the leash. "I don't want to have to delay the evacuation any more than I have to, but I'm afraid that I require one final task from your squad."

Kevin blinked in surprise, but held his tongue. This was not the time for questions.

"You're the only squad left with a transport large enough to carry additional passengers," the former dean explained hastily. "I have two high-value targets for you to escort to Slumberland. The first you already know – that mercenary you picked up at Tripod, Waters. As for the other, well…" She paused. "Morrison, may I speak with you and your squad leaders in private?"

"Yes, commander," replied Steve, and turned to the other Badgers as Sugar bounded up the stairs of the Battle Bus, terrified by the loud explosions from outside. "Kuri, you're in charge. Split up the squad and get everything loaded into the Bus. Matt, I want her ready to go ASAP, okay?"

Matt and Kuri nodded and immediately set to work assigning jobs to the other Jerkops, while Kevin, Zoey, and Steve dashed after Walsh. Outside, the battle raged on as more and more of the Transformers arrived on the scene to reinforce their comrades. Faced with an enemy that not even the elite armored Sonichus could take down, the EHPF had no choice but to continue their relentless attack and hope that Angelica Rosechu would take out the robotic support units soon.

"Only a few people know about what I'm going to show you," Walsh stated bluntly, her eyes narrowed to intense crimson slits as she led the three Honey Badgers through the command and control room and into the administrator meeting room. "As of this moment, you are not to speak of this to _anyone_, not even your own squadmates. If anything happens to him, anything at all…"

"What are you talking about?" Zoey asked in confusion. "If anything happens to _who_?"

"Mom?" a small voice sounded from Walsh's office.

As Kevin looked on in astonishment, a little blond-haired boy who looked to be no older than eight stepped through the door, his eyes wide and a look of innocent confusion on his face. There was something unsettling about the child's stare, but the Jerkop couldn't quite figure out what that was…until the boy took another few steps forward, revealing two deeply crimson irises.

"Say hello, Marty," the PVCC commander instructed in an unfamiliar, strangely tender voice.

"Hi," the boy addressed the Jerkops nervously. "Mom, who are they? Why do I have to leave?"

"Because if the chus find you, honey, they'll take you away and lock you up in CWCville Penn forever and ever," Walsh continued. She knelt down and kissed the child on his forehead, then looked back at the stunned Honey Badgers. "I suppose I owe you an explanation, Morrison."

"Yes," breathed Steve, his face blank. "You do, commander."

"You'll have to wait," said Walsh. "It's a long story." She gazed at the Manajerk pleadingly, but firmly. "I just heard from Jason. Chandler's arrived in Tennessee, and I have a feeling I know who he's going after next. I'm entrusting you with my son, Morrison. Make sure he reaches Slumberland alive, and I swear, I'll do everything in my power to get your squad into 14 Brunchville Lane tonight. You kill those little brats, and you make them _scream_ for their daddy."

Kevin couldn't believe what he was hearing, yet the truth stood scared and trembling before him. Not only did Mary Lee Walsh have a child, an actual child, she had kept him a secret from the rest of the entire PVCC administration. Kevin didn't know how the boy had been able to hide for so long without rousing suspicion, but he had a sneaking suspicion that Graduon was involved.

"_Slaweel,"_ the spirit's voice sounded inside his head. _"Slaweel, what are you doing?"_

"Mom?" Marty asked softly, hugging Walsh's waist. "You're going to Slumberland too, right?"

"I have business with the Mayor, sweetheart," the PVCC commander answered, and stroked her son's hair. Kevin noticed, with a great amount of surprise, that two tiny red stubs protruded from the blond boy's head, like a smaller version of Walsh's horned hairband. Before he could wonder any further as to what in Arceus's name was going on, Graduon's voice was back in his head.

"_Give him to these fools, Slaweel, and you destroy your last chance of survival. Either you both live, or you send him to his death and I take you as a vessel instead. We had an agreement!"_

"My decision is final." Walsh's response was meant for both the spirit and the Honey Badgers. "I'm trusting you, Morrison. Don't let me down." She looked down at Marty, picked him up, and hugged him close, rocking the child back and forth as he whimpered and held back tears. "Don't worry, Marty. Nothing's going to happen to Mommy. I'll see you later. Be a good Jerkop."

"You too…" Marty sniffed. "Bye, Mom. Kick that fat fuck's virgin butt."

Zoey and Kevin drew back, astonished by the barrage of foul language from such an innocent-looking child. Steve couldn't help but let out a sudden laugh that startled Marty, then quickly shut up and grinned at the little blond boy. "You ever been on a school bus before, Marty?"

Marty shook his head as Walsh guided him over to the trio of Honey Badgers. Kissing her son on the forehead one final time, she nodded to Steve. "Go. Get him out of here…and be safe."

* * *

**Menchi-Nasu, garage, 2:27 p.m.**

"Is that it? Everyone ready to go?" Matt turned and looked over his shoulder, silently counting off all of the assembled Honey Badgers – Sugarplum Fury included - that were seated in the Battle Bus. "All right, that's it! Once they get back, we're pulling out of here, got it?"

"Got it!" Nate shouted just as the steel husk of a destroyed S.A.V. skidded across the concrete into the garage and collapsed in a blazing heap. Leaning over the back of his seat, he reached out and adjusted the damp washcloth that had been draped across Nick's forehead. The sniper lay on his back on one of the two medical cots in the back of the Battle Bus, his chest wrapped in bandages and a rubber breathing tube running out of the side of his mouth to a small tank of air. "It's gonna be okay, buddy. Hey. How you feeling?"

Nick shook his head weakly. He couldn't even speak without enduring massive amounts of pain, and the wound in his lung wasn't exactly helping his attitude. Most of the Honey Badgers were just amazed that the Jerkop was still alive after taking a heavy-caliber sniper round to the chest.

"So, back to Slumberland, then?" Jexis laughed nervously, shifting around in her seat as Matt turned the ignition and started up the bus. "Wow…heh…I can't believe we're finally going back there! Think they'll give us our old barracks back?"

"I wouldn't call it impossible." Allie glanced out the window. "Hey, they're coming back!"

"Who is tiny blond child?" Serge grunted in surprise.

"Okay, we all set?" asked Steve, and helped Marty up the stairs and into the bus. The young boy had been supplied with a baseball cap to hide his undeveloped - yet otherwise noticeable - horns. "Everyone, this is Marty. Security found him wandering around the streets earlier this morning – Walsh wants us to take him to Slumberland, away from the fighting."

"Sounds good." Matt closed the doors after Kevin and Ben entered, the latter of whom had been handcuffed to prevent any escape attempts. While the information he'd given the administrators had been correct and might very well have saved dozens of lives, they still weren't about to take any chances with the former mercenary soldier. "All right, that's it! We're out of here!"

"About time, too," added Zoey, and sank into the cot next to Nick. "Marty, come sit in the back with me. I'll introduce you to everyone, okay?"

"Okay," Marty replied shyly, and followed her down the aisle to the rear of the Battle Bus. Sugar sniffed his foot, bristled up briefly, then trotted after the little boy, eager to find out more about this new passenger. She only spared a look of utter contempt for Ben, as well as a growl.

"Sit down," Kevin ordered, and pushed the handcuffed loyalist into a seat just in front of Zoey. "Don't try anything stupid. As far as we're concerned, you're still a merc spy."

Ben didn't attempt to retort, but instead sighed and slumped back in his seat.

"I know you're all angry with me," he mumbled. "You need a scapegoat for all the horrible shit my friends and I put you through. But I don't want to do that anymore, and I swear on Arceus's mane, I'm going to prove it to your administrators. Just give me a chance."

"That isn't for us to decide," snapped Zoey coldly, then reached down and picked up Sugar. "Hey Marty, this is a honey badger! Her name's Sugar! Want to pet her?"

"Does she bite?" asked Marty, warily reaching out toward the honey badger as she bristled up.

"No, sweetie, she won't bite you," the squad leader said reassuringly. "Go ahead."

"Right. Matt, get us out of here before they bring this whole fucking place down!" ordered Steve from his seat in the front of the Battle Bus. "Kuri, Serge, Allie, Kevin, get to your stations and be ready to open fire once we hit the south approach!" He leaned toward his shoulder and clicked the button on his walkie-talkie. "Joe, you still there? Everything okay?"

"_Yeah, we're still here, Honey Badger Command,"_ Joe responded, though his voice was almost indistinguishable through a heavy layer of static. _"We're on the move through Upper Central, just about to pass under the freeway. No sign of merc activity out here, but watch your step. You're clear to go anytime you want, but I'd suggest that you leave IMMEDIATELY!"_

"Duly noted," replied Steve, and grabbed his XM8. "FLOOR IT, MATT!"

The Battle Bus's engine let out a rumbling roar as Matt stomped on the accelerator as hard as he could. A grimy puff of smoke spewed from the exhaust pipe, and with a squeal of tires on concrete, the armored vehicle shot forward through the open garage door, almost immediately flattening one of the elite Sonichus who had been firing concentrated Thundershocks up at the S.A.V. units. There was a loud _clang_ as the front-mounted battering ram collided with the unsuspecting chu, and a few droplets of blood splashed across the windshield.

"FIRE!" yelled Zoey, and cupped her hands over the little boy's ears. "Don't watch, Marty!"

Kevin rose from his seat and grabbed hold of the rear SAW turret with both of his hands. Swinging it to the left as the Battle Bus wheeled around and roared off toward the eastern gate, he squeezed the trigger and was once again rewarded with a shuddering backlash the likes of which left his arms nearly numb from the elbow down. Forcing himself to keep the machine gun aimed toward the mass of yellow shapes, he swiveled the turret back and forth while Nate climbed the ladder and began taking potshots at the EHPF infantry from up on the top deck.

Upon noticing the monstrous yellow behemoth barreling towards them, most of the Sonichus immediately fired Thundershocks and other electrical attacks straight into its forward hull, not even bothering to try moving out of the way first. Rolling his eyes, Matt twisted the steering wheel, gritted his teeth, and braked, hard. Instantly, a cloud of white smoke billowed from all four of the Battle Bus's tires as the vehicle slid, unbelievably, into a screeching drift. Fighting to keep control of the armored school bus, the Jerkop braced himself against the floor with one foot not a moment too soon. The group of foolishly brave chus were smashed flat against the concrete, plowed into a broken mess of ragged yellow spikes, shattered bones, and shredded meat. Blood splattered the windows on the right side of the bus, forcing Allie to keep firing her SAW blindly into the crowd. The Jerkops on the ground had all been replaced by Transformers to hold the southern approach, so she didn't have to worry about any friendly fire problems.

"Cease fire! CEASE FIRE!" Steve shouted over the thunderous roar of the Battle Bus's machine guns, the Barrett, and Baba Yaga. "Okay, we're clear! Gate's open, take us through!"

The Battle Bus roared through the gateway and into the streets of CWCville, swinging around toward the south as more PVCC trucks and Jeeps zoomed past on their way to the various HQs located around CWCville. His arms still shaking, Kevin crashed back into the seat next to Ben and exhaled in relief, glad to finally be finished with the nightmarish machine gun again. Every time he had to use it, he felt like it was going to break his arms.

"You're standing up way too straight," commented the mercenary prisoner. "Lean forward and grip it hard so your arms don't shake. That way, your body diverts all the recoil into the floor."

Kevin glanced at him. "Uh…thanks."

"No problem," said Ben, and leaned back. "What was your name again?"

"Kevin," replied the Jerkop. "Look, you helped us out, and I'm grateful for that, but just sit still and do what we say. If you're lucky, Walsh might let you work in the Slumberland cafeteria."

"No." Ben shook his head. "No, I'm not going to let them just push me out of the way like that."

"You'll take what you're given, and you won't give the administrators any trouble about it." Kevin looked up towards the front of the bus, where Kuri, Nate, and Allie were sitting together and discussing something while Steve sat alone, conversing with Joe on the radio. The Honey Badgers looked absolutely worn out, and he was just glad that the squad hadn't sustained anything worse than Nick's punctured lung.

"He's doing fine," reported Jexis. "I'm gonna give Steve an update. Keep an eye on him, okay?"

Kevin nodded and glanced out the rear window as the medic hurried past Zoey and Marty to the front of the Battle Bus. Only a few other PVCC vehicles were following them: two small trucks, a Humvee, a van, and a Punislav…

…_wait, where did we get a Hummer?_ Kevin thought to himself in confusion as he stood up and stepped over to the SAW turret to get a better look. Either one of the Menchi-Nasu Jerkop squads had managed to perform grand theft auto on a loyalist vehicle, or else it was a-

_BOOM!_ The foremost truck spun to the right, nearly spinning out of control as a barrage of SMG fire impacted along its side and popped one of its front tires. Reflexively seizing the machine gun's grip again, Kevin swung it up and opened fire, startling Zoey, Marty, Sugar, and Ben. The SAW roared in his arms, spraying heavy bullets into the loyalist Humvee as it swerved back and forth like a rabbit dodging a fox, expertly avoiding the majority of his fire.

"KEVIN! KEVIN, WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?" yelled Steve.

"LOYALIST HUMMER!" Zoey shouted as she leapt to her feet and grabbed hold of Marty. "STEVE, GET MARTY TO THE FRONT OF THE BUS!"

His heart pounding louder than a bass drum, Kevin could only watch in utter horror as a second Humvee swung into the street from an adjacent alley, revealing a female mercenary gripping a thick metal tube against her shoulder. As he planted his feet and swung the SAW around to intercept the oncoming vehicle, a puff of smoke burst from the end of the tube, then rapidly grew into a grey spear that lanced forward down the street and buried itself into the rear of the Battle Bus, just below where Kevin was standing.

Time froze for a split second. Then the world turned to fire.

* * *

**?**

"Told you we'd meet again, didn't I? Finally got another chance at that yellow piece of skítu."

"That you did, Goody. Looks like he's up. Wakey wakey, sunshine."

_WHUMP! _Kevin's eyes snapped open as the hard barrel of an M16 drove into his abdomen, immediately knocking the remaining breath out of his lungs and awakening him from his post-traumatic stupor. A thundering pain surged through his head, stemming from the spot where a jagged shard from the Battle Bus's window had embedded itself into his left temple.

Two loyalist soldiers stood looking down upon him with distaste: a bearded man with black hair and an old battle scar in the middle of his forehead, and a viciously calm silver-blonde-haired Scandinavian woman. Both of the mercenaries had their weapons trained on Kevin, though the woman kept stealing glances toward the other four bodies lying around him in case Zoey, Nick, Ben, or Marty regained consciousness. The Battle Bus was nowhere in sight, but in the distance, Kevin could hear the sharp reports of gunfire echoing through the streets. His wrists were locked together by handcuffs, and the backs of his shirt and pants were dirty and scratched, indicating that he and his comrades had been hurled out of the bus and into the street by the explosion.

Dizzily, Kevin pushed himself off the ground, his head spinning. Without warning, the female merc knelt down and punched him square in the jaw, slamming him down against the asphalt hard enough to nearly knock the Jerkop unconscious again. Stars exploded in front of his eyes, bursting and reforming over and over again as he coughed and writhed in immense pain.

"Did I say you could get up, little rebel?" the loyalist sneered mockingly. "Don't you know who I am, little rebel? You don't have _any fucking idea_ how long we've been following you and your friends, do you?" She inhaled deeply. "It's gonna be a cold one tonight. Not as cold as home, but pretty close. Of course, _they_ don't need to worry about the cold. All that fat…it's like a jacket."

"Goo-goo? Sonee!" A single Sonee plopped down from the top of a trash can it had been rooting around in and waddled toward Nick's body with a gleeful "YAY!", licking its harelips excitedly. Without a word, the bearded mercenary casually walked over to the feral baby chu, raised a boot, and brought it down right on top of the Sonee's fuzzy, bulbous head. The tiny Electric Hedgehog Pokémon died with a piercing squeal and a sloppy crunch, its brain liquefied and its organs spilling out in slippery coils from its plump belly. Wiping the sticky red mess off on the sidewalk, the loyalist turned back to Kevin and smiled condescendingly.

"Pathetic," he muttered. "That's what they are, really. Larvae. Primordial, underdeveloped, and hideous parasites that are easily crushed by one's feet. Easy to find…easy to kill, not so easy to wipe out. _You_, on the other hand…" Stowing the M16 on his back, the soldier reached for his belt and drew a wicked-looking combat knife, then placed the tip beneath Kevin's jaw and tilted his head up. "You…you're the opposite. Hard to find. Hard to kill. But you…you don't breed as fast, do you? You don't spend half the day fucking as many pretty girls as possible, do you?"

The knife withdrew, and Kevin at last was allowed to relax. The mercenary's voice was almost impossible to hear over the frantic pounding of his own heart and the pain in his skull. Somehow, every word echoed in the Jerkop's head like the tolling of a great bell, sending fresh waves of fear and pain through his bruised body. He pulled at the cuffs, but they wouldn't loosen or break.

"Stay still or you get another," the woman ordered, kissing her knuckles sadistically. "And don't tempt me, hálfviti. I don't like hitting little boys who can't fight back. Bad karma, am I right?"

"Absolutely, Goody," replied the bearded man, and winked at Kevin. "Now then, don't bother hoping for some kind of last-minute rescue. Junior's leading the rest of your friends on a little detour. He certainly loves a good car chase, that man." He glanced toward the crushed body of the Sonee he had just killed, and a thin smile spread across his face as more of the little fuzzy pink and yellow blobs squirmed their way out of the surrounding garbage cans, dumpsters, air ducts, and other containers and passageways. "Well well, and here I thought we'd have to wait a little longer. Not anymore. We've got all the time in the world, son. All the time in the world…"

"Sonee! Goo-gee!"

"YAY! Gaa-gaa! Wosey!"

"Sonee! Hee hee hee! YAY!"

"Tee hee! YAY! Seeeeeeee!"

"Oh, God," gasped Kevin as realization pounded into him with the force of a piledriver. The mercenaries hadn't _just_ meant to kill him and his squadmates. They had brought the Honey Badgers right into the middle of the abandoned zone. Right to a Feeding Day drop site.

And the lunch guests had just arrived.


	16. Chapter 12: Trial and Terror

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 12: Trial and Terror**

**June 9, 2008, CWCville, abandoned zone, unidentified Feeding Day drop site, 3:03 p.m.**

Kevin cursed loudly as the two mercenaries casually stepped back to their Humvee and seated themselves on the hood to avoid the swarm of feral Sonees and Roseys pouring into the drop site. Heaving his body up into a sitting position, he grappled uselessly with the handcuffs, but only succeeded in rubbing his wrists raw against the unyielding metal. There wasn't enough time, and he didn't know how much more of it his fellow Jerkops would need to regain consciousness. He had to fend off the ferals long enough to even the odds, and just hope that the loyalists didn't decide to shoot them down then and there.

In a tripping, stumbling, squeaking tide of fuzz, the pack of larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon advanced, while dozens more crawled out of open manholes and dropped to the ground from air ducts. Roseys paraskirted into the drop site one at a time, letting out shrill "WHEEEE!"s of joy as they lurched their way over the edges of windowsills, gutters, and rooftops and drifted down. On the ground, two main hordes had amassed, one heading straight for Kevin and his friends, the other congregating around the Humvee and whining at the stressfully out-of-reach mercenaries.

"Okay," Kevin growled, clenching his teeth as he pushed himself to his feet. "WHO'S FIRST?"

"Seeeeeeeeeeeeee!" an airborne Rosey cried in delight as she dropped down on top of Kevin and landed on his right shoulder. Gripping the Jerkop with her sausage-like armstubs, she squeaked an eager "YAY!" and opened her harelip mouth, exposing a tiny set of sharp teeth.

Caught completely off guard, Kevin stumbled backward and slipped, landing hard on his back next to where Marty lay. There was a loud crunch and a shriek of pain, and warm, wet liquid soaked the back of his jacket. The Rosey riding piggyback was instantly crushed from the waist down, her pressurized innards squirting out like a toy can full of party snakes. Shaking the dying baby chu's body off of his back, the Jerkop rolled over and looked skyward, just in time to avoid another paraskirting Rosey that plopped down next to his hip. Out of desperation, Kevin twisted his leg back and lashed out, planting a firm kick right to the center of the little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's belly. The Rosey's breath left its lungs with a shrill wheeze, and several ribs cracked like dry branches. Wailing, it fell forward and began convulsing in pain, until Kevin rolled over, planted his heel on the back of the larva's head, and smashed its skull open against the ground.

Beside him, Marty let out a soft moan and stirred briefly. Encouraged, Kevin managed to right himself just as the first few hungry babies toddled up to Zoey's boots and began prodding them out of curiosity. A Sonee pulled its fat body up onto the unconscious Jerkop's leg and cheered, immensely proud of its rather insignificant achievement. The triumphant little chu's joy was promptly silenced when Kevin dashed over and kicked it straight into the wall, splattering its tiny body into a chunky slew of gore. The other Sonees and Roseys paid no heed to the death of their comrade, and instead began gnawing and gumming Zoey's rubber boots.

For Kevin, it was just another game of Kick-a-Chu. With his arms handcuffed behind his back, he couldn't grab or throw the babies away, but thankfully his feet were still free. The feral baby chus quickly learned this the hard way when four of their number found themselves stomped flat against the concrete, crushed into piles of broken bones and meat beneath the furious Jerkop's boots. A Rosey had her head crushed from above, popping her glassy green eyeballs straight out while her fatty brain tissue was ground down into the remnants of her skull. Wiping the sticky red and pink smear off on the ground, Kevin whirled around and booted a Sonee towards the mercs in a desperate attempt to silence their mocking laughter. The wounded baby chu sailed through the air and smashed against the Humvee's bumper, spraying Goody's leg with blood.

"Fuck! You little son of a bitch!" snarled the loyalist, and drew her pistol. Kevin dropped to the ground just as Goody fired, but fortunately, the bullet ricocheted off the side of a crushed car lying against the wall of an adjacent apartment, leaving the Jerkop prisoner unharmed. In a flash, Herb had reached over and grabbed her arm, preventing her from firing any more shots.

"Are you out of your fucking mind?" the mercenary captain growled. "Stow that thing before you bring the entire PVCC down on us." His face softened into a smile as Goody holstered her pistol. "Hey. You know, they're gonna give us some serious R&R time after today. I'd say we earned a little trip to Lightning to celebrate. Just you and me…"

The female loyalist grinned and nudged Herb in the ribs. "I like where this is going." She shot a disdainful glance toward Kevin. "For fuck's sake, you worthless little shits, eat them already!"

"Kevin! Kevin, help! Please!"

Surprised, Kevin nearly lost his balance again as Marty pushed himself to his feet and hurried over to him, his dirty face streaked with frightened tears. The little boy's baseball cap had fallen off in the chaos, revealing the two little red nubs that protruded through his blond hair. Before the Jerkop could react, Marty collided with him and hugged him around the waist, trembling as the hungry squeals of more Sonees and Roseys filled the drop site like the screeching of vultures.

"I don't wanna get eaten," sobbed the boy, and squeezed Kevin even tighter. "Kevin, help me!"

"It'll be okay. It's gonna be okay," Kevin replied, and pried the child off of him. It was only then that he noticed Marty's hands were free. "Marty, listen to me. I need you to listen, okay?"

Marty nodded.

"I don't know what your mom taught you about feral Sonees and Roseys," explained the Jerkop quickly as he pushed a trio of larvae off of Ben's body and sent them tumbling backwards head over stumpfeet. "Marty, listen. You're going to have to hurt them. You're going to need to kill as many of these little fuckers as you can. We've got to keep them away from Zoey and the others until…" He paused and kicked a Rosey away from Nick. "Until something good happens."

The little boy gulped nervously. "I…I'll try. I've never…"

"Doesn't matter!" growled Kevin as a Sonee latched onto his ankle and began trying to zap him with a pathetic Spark attack. "Just get them away! Get them away!" Raising his other foot, he stomped down hard on the baby chu's head and smiled in satisfaction as its skull crunched.

"Eeewwww!" Marty yelled in disgust. "Kevin, I can't do this! They're…it's not…"

"THOSE LITTLE BASTARDS ARE GONNA EAT YOU, MARTY!" shouted the Jerkop, and kicked a tiny six-inch-tall Rosey in the head, decapitating the baby chu. "I CAN'T DO THIS BY MYSELF! PRETEND YOU'RE PLAYING WHACK-A-MOLE AND KILL THEM!"

Shaking with fright, Marty squeezed his eyes shut and cautiously advanced on the nearest larva, a Sonee who was trying to squirm its way onto Ben's shoulder to get at his neck. As Kevin stomped a trio of Roseys into mush, the little boy reached out and closed his hands around the fat baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, digging his fingers into the soft fur of its torso.

"Sonee! Goo-goo! Sonee!" cried the Sonee in surprise, kicking its stumpfeet in the air as Marty lifted it off the ground and gripped it apprehensively. "Goo-goo! Nee! WAAAAAAHHHHH!"

Surprised by the shrill wail, Marty hurled the little chu away and clutched his hands over his ears. Screaming, the Sonee plummeted to the ground and smashed against the concrete, which ripped its face open and shattered its little black nose and part of its jaw. Gurgling in immense agony, it crawled away from the little boy, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.

"That's good! That's good! Keep doing that!" Kevin yelled encouragingly, and kicked a Sonee under its near-nonexistent chin. The little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon toppled backward and fell, coughing up blood and clutching at its crushed throat with its useless armstubs. Ignoring the Sonee's strangled choking, the Jerkop drew his foot back to kick another Rosey, but slipped on a pile of bloody flesh from one of the other babies he'd stomped on. With a startled yell, he fell backward, directly on top of a Sonee that was waddling towards Marty. The baby chu's melon-like head disappeared in a bloody spray as Kevin literally sat on it, smashing its skull and part of its upper body. Gritting his teeth in disgust, the Jerkop rolled over and frantically began kicking away Sonees and Roseys left and right. Marty managed to grab a large rock and throw it into the swarm, where it crushed a Rosey's stumpfoot and shattered a second baby's ribcage. Encouraged by his success, the boy heaved another piece of rubble at a Sonee and crushed it into a red paste.

Kevin kicked and kicked, desperately trying to fend off the horde as it closed in around him on all sides. Dozens waddled toward him, and dozens more just kept pouring into the drop site, attracted by the sweet smell of blood and the gleeful cries of their fellow ferals. The Jerkop knew he couldn't hold out forever, or fatigue would soon set in. There were too many, just too many…

"Kevin! Hold on!"

A black boot smashed into a Sonee that had been prodding at Kevin's side with its armstubs, sending the baby chu flying away with a screech of pain. Looking up, Kevin felt a wave of shock and relief surge through him as Zoey worked her way over beside him, pushing herself along with only her feet. The Jerkop's handcuffed arms were covered in little bite marks and a shard of debris from the Battle Bus explosion had cut open her chin, but she was otherwise unharmed, and more than willing to help push back the fuzzy flood of babies sweeping towards them.

"You hurt?" Kevin yelled over the earsplitting "YAY!" of a Rosey behind him. Lashing out with his cuffed hands, he managed to clothesline the feral long enough for Marty to drop a rock on its head and crush its skull.

"No, I'm okay!" Zoey shouted back. "How's Nick doing?"

"Still breathing!" Kevin glanced over his shoulder to where Nick and Ben lay unconscious side by side, right where the loyalists had dumped them. The small air tank had amazingly survived all the way to the abandoned zone, its tube still sticking out of the corner of the wounded sniper's mouth to provide his ruptured lung with oxygen. "Move back! We need to put up a barrier!"

"Good!" The squad leader whirled around and managed to trap a Sonee between her knees, then pressed them together and squished its torso, cracking its ribcage. "What's the plan after that?"

Kevin couldn't answer, mainly because he didn't have the slightest idea.

Back at the Humvee, the second half of the feral swarm had grown impatient and restless, yet continued trying to pull their fat bodies up onto the vehicle. Some of the little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon were even standing on top of each other, piling into a huge mass of squirming yellow and pink fuzz in their haste to reach the two mercenaries. On the hood, Herb and Goody simply pushed off any of the babies who managed to static cling themselves to the side, and continued to spectate the desperate last stand of their Jerkop victims.

"Think we went too far?" Herb asked, watching as a Sonee sank its teeth into Marty's sneaker. The little boy yelled in terror and punched the little chu right in its gut, causing it to shit itself out of stress. Disgusted, Marty kicked away the soiled Sonee and grabbed a small piece of rusty metal to use as a makeshift club. "I mean, that kid's gotta be what, ten, eleven chronologically?"

"Could this be remorse from the great Captain Patterson?" replied Goody, with a sly wink. "You're getting soft."

"Eh." The loyalist officer shrugged. "I forgot. This city's going to hell in a handbasket."

"Hell?" The woman laughed. "We're already there, Herb." She glanced back to the struggle. "Oh look. Sleeping Beauty's finally up."

"What's happening?" yelled Ben as Kevin and Zoey pulled him up and set him in the center of the human barricade between the ferals and Nick. Shocked, he stared across the squealing flood of Sonees and Roseys advancing on them. "What the hell's going on? Kevin, where are we?"

"Abandoned zone!" shouted Kevin as he managed to wind the chain of his handcuffs around a feral and garrote it while kicking away two more. A sudden pain lanced through his hand as a Rosey began biting away at it, but Marty grabbed the baby chu and hurled it away before it could do any significant damage. So far, the little boy hadn't actually _killed_ too many of the ferals – but any defense was better than standing around and crying uselessly. Walsh had taught her son well.

Zoey raised both of her feet and brought them down on a Sonee's back, effectively pancaking the little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's entire midsection. The Sonee shrieked as its chubby belly split and its spine shattered, but the prisoners were too busy fending off its comrades to finish the job. Eventually, another Sonee waddled up to the fallen one and began nibbling at its broken body, cooing with joy as it cannibalized the screaming baby. Kevin fought back a shudder of disgust, then punted a Rosey into the air. Its skirtachute deployed instantly, allowing the chu to gently float back down, straight toward Ben. Unfortunately for the Rosey, its descent came to an abrupt halt when the former mercenary lunged forward and headbutted it out of the sky.

"KEVIN, WATCH OUT!"

"Goo-goo! Woseeeeeeeeey! YAY!"

Kevin felt his blood freeze in his veins as the ominous _fwump_ of opening skirtachutes sounded from above. Looking up, he only had time to let out a terrified yell before three incredibly obese Roseys landed on his face and chest, smothering him in a mess of reeking pink fur and squeals of "YAY!" Marty desperately tried to push the immense babies off of the Jerkop's body, but each one packed nearly forty-five pounds of fat, a truly colossal weight for such small creatures.

"KEVIN!" screamed the little boy as he struggled fruitlessly with one of the Roseys. "KEVIN!"

"MMMPPPPHHHHFFFF!" Kevin managed to yell through the heavy layer of fat pressing into his face. The Roseys weren't even trying to bite him – they just fell forward and let their pudgy bodies cut off his air supply in a disgustingly effective attempt to suffocate the Jerkop. Stars danced in front of Kevin's eyes as he rolled back and forth, trying to throw off the bloated babies before he lost consciousness and asphyxiated in the stinking pillow of fuzz and fat…

_CRUNCH! SNAP! CRUNCH!_

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYY YYY!"

"GAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Kevin gasped as one of the fat Roseys was torn from his face, uncovering his mouth and allowing him a single breath of air before a gush of warm, thick liquid splattered onto his face. Something else was on top of him now, its sharp claws digging into his Kevlar vest as it attacked the second feral. Shaking his head, Kevin opened his eyes just in time to see a furious black and white blur tear its way through the next Rosey, ripping its head off and shredding its body into a shower of gore in less than three seconds. Through his bleary vision, the Jerkop could only lie there and watch as the creature leapt at the last of the three baby chus – the one that Marty was fighting – and literally tore it in half, splashing blood across itself, Kevin, and the little boy. Shaking itself triumphantly, it raised its head and let out a vicious snarl.

"GRRRRROWWWWRRRRR!"

"What the f…SUGAR!" yelled Zoey as the berserk honey badger leaped off of Kevin's chest and tackled a Sonee to the ground. Before the little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon could even let out a single scream, Sugarplum Fury lashed out with a clawed paw and ripped its belly open, then plunged her head inside its ribcage and devoured its heart. Spinning around to continue her vicious assault on the feral horde, she growled in rage and pounced on another tiny Sonee from the back, digging her claws into its midsection and biting away at its spine until the baby chu split in half with a sickening crack of bones and a sloppy ripping noise. Sugar left the Sonee's two struggling halves to die, then launched herself at a Rosey and tore its jugular out. The dying larva collapsed with a choking gurgle, blood pooling onto the concrete from its ruined throat.

"The _hell?_" Goody looked on in disbelief as the fierce little mammal set about carving a bloody swathe through the oncoming swarm of feral Sonees and Roseys. She glanced at Herb, unable to comprehend what had just happened. "What the fuck is…where did _that_ come from?"

"Backseat," the mercenary captain growled as he looked back at the open rear window where Sugar had climbed out. "Must've stowed away on board when we loaded them." He picked up his M16 and beckoned to his lieutenant. "Come on." Kicking a Rosey off of the Humvee with his foot, Patterson waded straight into the horde, ignoring the dozens of little thumps as the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon beat their armstubs against his thick boots and unsuccessfully tried to bite them. Goody stepped down after him, but made sure to step on a few larvae first.

Panting and gasping, Kevin struggled up as Marty clung to him out of fear. The horrific sickly stench of Rosey still lingered in his nostrils, and his face dripped with chu blood. Sugar had singlehandedly taken over the defense, sending the frightened ferals scurrying backward with each vicious snarl and every butchered Sonee or Rosey. Zoey, Ben, Marty, and Kevin could only look on in silent dread as the pair of mercenaries trudged towards them, their assault rifles aimed directly at the pair of Honey Badgers. The honey badger paid the loyalists no heed, except to move out of their way and pounce on another Rosey, ripping it limb from limb in her rage.

"What do we do?" whispered Marty, hugging Kevin even more tightly as the two mercenaries stopped in front of them. "Kevin, who are they? Are those the bad guys?"

"Yeah," Kevin breathed. "Yeah, Marty, they're the bad guys. Don't…say…anything." Leaning back a few inches, he felt his fingers brush against the rough surface of a large brick. "Marty, listen, I need you to do something really brave for me…"

"Get up, Waters," growled Herb, and prodded Ben in the chest with the snout of his M16. "Come on. Playtime's over. Junior's got the others under control. First thing I want to know…what the _fuck_ were you thinking, you little coward?! They knew the Sparkies were coming, and the only way they could've figured that out is if someone squealed. Someone weak. Someone like _you_."

"I…I…" Ben stammered, glancing around as sweat dripped profusely from his brow. Kevin and Zoey's jaws dropped open in shock. "Captain, I was undercover! They were gonna use those LIESA drones on me! And…and it's not like I got any of the Jinkies killed!" He gulped, on the verge of tears. "Did I? Oh Arceus, please tell me I didn't-"

"Stop whining," Goody snapped distastefully. "No, no casualties. But I can't say the same for the PVCC and friends. Something big just went down in Tennessee. And I mean _Chandler_ big."

Zoey glanced at Kevin and mouthed _4-cent_garbage_. The Jerkop nodded and immediately fixed Ben with one of the single most hateful stares he'd ever given to anyone. The mercenary had played them all for fools – Walsh, Gee, the other administrators of Menchi-Nasu, and worst of all, him. And he'd just begun to trust Waters, too. The betrayal was almost too much to bear.

"You know…" continued Patterson, stroking his beard as he studied Ben. "I've seen your M.O., Waters. Do you ever fucking learn?" He frowned. "I'm sure you've heard this a billion times by now, but it looks like you need a reminder. So you know what I can't _stand?_ Weak links. You know what weak links do? They fuck up squad cohesion. Are you a weak link, kid? Because right now, you're doing a great job of looking the part. You best not be if you want out of here."

"I…WHY THE FUCK DID YOU LEAVE ME FOR THE FERALS!" shouted the loyalist, loud enough to startle Sugar away from disemboweling a Sonee. A look of wide-eyed determination flashed across his face – an expression Kevin had never seen before. "Some kind of 'tough love' lesson, right? Was that it? I did what you told me to! What the _fuck_ is your problem with me?!"

"Arceus, Herb," Goody scoffed. "You sure we can't just leave him here another few minutes?"

"I'm considering it," the captain muttered. "There's a fine line between letting some information slip for the greater good…and completely betraying our contractors. I'd say you're leaning towards the latter side, Waters. So here's what I'm gonna do." He patted the knife sheath on his belt, then pointed to Marty, who was still hanging on to Kevin. "You. Kid. Hey kid, come here."

"Stop it! Don't do it, you son of a bitch!" snarled Ben. "Don't you dare fucking hurt him! I won't go on any more scout missions, I promise. For fuck's sake, Captain, he's just a kid!"

"I said, _come here_." Patterson stepped forward and grabbed Marty's arm, then paused when he noticed the two stubby horns protruding from the boy's head. "Hang on. Goody, take a look."

"Easy. Take it easy, Herb," the female merc interjected, putting on her kindest, most deceptive smile as she reached out and patted the bony red growths. "It's okay, little guy. We're just here to help you. We're gonna take you back to your mommy and get those things all cured and…"

"I DON'T WANNA GET CURED!" screamed Marty, and released his grip on Kevin. Herb only had time to draw a surprised breath before the little boy spun towards him and hurled the brick right at his face. There was a dull _thump_ as the solid block of ceramic smacked into the man's cheek, scraping several small cuts into his skin and nearly knocking him out then and there.

"GET 'EM!" Zoey shouted as she kicked out with both feet, landing a solid blow against Goody's shins and effectively tripping her. "SUGAR, KILL!"

"GRRROWRR!"

Sugar, Zoey, Marty, and Kevin charged simultaneously, colliding with the stunned loyalists in a colossal train wreck of struggling bodies. Around them, the chu larvae watched in confusion, utterly perplexed by the sudden fight that had just broken out and not even bothering to attack the now defenseless Nick and Ben. Unable to grab the mercenaries with his cuffed hands, Kevin launched himself at Herb like a battering ram, driving the top of his head into the officer's chin.

"AAAGH! FUCK!" Patterson went down with a shocked yell and a crack of teeth as Kevin slammed into him and tumbled to the ground, rolling over and over across the bloody concrete while Zoey and Sugar grappled with Goody. "GET OFF! GET OFF, YOU BASTARD!"

_WHAM!_ Stars exploded in front of Kevin's eyes, and blackness closed in from all sides. Pain shot through the side of his head, and before he knew it, he was flat on his back, reeling from where the loyalist had elbowed him in the jaw. Herb was on him in two seconds, dealing punch after punch to the Jerkop's unprotected head while Kevin desperately tried to roll away. At last, he managed to land a firm kick to Patterson's groin, buying him enough time to limp upright as the mercenary staggered backward in agony.

"HERB!" screamed Goody, kicking Zoey in the gut and violently elbowing Sugar off of her shoulder. "HERB, FUCKING SHOOT THEM ALREADY! I GOT THESE TWO!"

"Oh, you little bastard," groaned the loyalist officer, and rose to his feet, grimacing as he drew his pistol and aimed it at Kevin. The assault rifle had been knocked away in the chaos, and there was no time for the Jerkop to make a run for it. "You fucking little _bastard!_ DIE!"

Ben charged into the melee and tackled Herb from the side, grabbing his outstretched hand and wrenching it up, away from Kevin. The pistol went off with a loud bang, startling the crowd of Sonees and Roseys and making several of the yellow-furred larvae shit themselves in surprise. The Jerkop instinctively ducked away and lost his balance once more, crashing painfully to the hard concrete. Stunned, winded, and in immense pain from the mercenary's assault, he could lay there and gasp for breath, his head spinning and a high-pitched, distant whine ringing in his ears.

_Click! Click!_ The cold metal of the handcuffs fell away from Kevin's wrists, finally freeing him from the chafing restraints. Rolling onto his back in amazement, he was greeted by the sight of Marty standing over him with a huge grin on his face, holding up a tiny metal key.

"How…" he wheezed.

"You knocked it off of him!" Marty explained hastily, and tried to help push Kevin back onto his feet. "Kevin, come on! We gotta get out of here!"

"We can't leave Zoey or Nick!" coughed the Jerkop, and pushed himself up off of the ground, massaging his raw, reddened wrists. Ten feet away, Goody and Zoey's battle had only escalated even further. The loyalist had managed to pin her opponent beneath one knee while fending off Sugar and the trapped Jerkop's frantic punches. Hurling the honey badger away with a scream of rage, Goody turned back to Zoey and grappled at her belt for her knife to finish the job.

Kevin rammed into her from behind, grabbing the woman around her waist and heaving her off of Zoey in an impressive burst of adrenaline that surprised even him. Marty immediately dashed over to the surprised Jerkop and unlocked her cuffs, giving Zoey the freedom to grab a single Rosey from a nearby group of larvae and hurl it across the drop site, straight toward Goody.

"Goo-goo!" _WHUMP!_ The twenty-five-pound baby chu smacked into the struggling mercenary and immediately hugged her face, adhering herself with a jolt of static cling. Kevin released his hold on her and sprinted away, back towards where Marty and Zoey were dragging Nick upright.

"I've got him! I've got him, Marty!" Kevin shoved the little boy out of the way and grabbed the wounded sniper's ankles, while Zoey carefully lifted his shoulders. "MARTY! RUN!"

"What about Ben?!" yelled Marty, pointing to where the two mercenaries were still fighting.

As Herb and Ben grappled with each other in a frantic tug-of-war over the captain's pistol, the younger soldier somehow managed to drive his knee into his foe's stomach, stunning the merc long enough for Ben to plant a second, much more powerful blow into his chest. The loyalist's Kevlar vest absorbed most of the damage, but the kinetic force sent him toppling backward over a pile of rubble, directly on top of a group of feral larvae. With only seconds to spare, Ben turned and dashed across the drop site, just as Goody drew her knife and savagely eviscerated the Rosey clinging to her face, plunging the blade into its fat body while it shrieked and struggled in her grasp. Hurling the wailing, dying baby chu away, she spun towards the fleeing Jerkops, but by the time she managed to grab her M21 and kick away two Sonees that were playing with it, the Jerkops, Sugar, Marty, and Ben had disappeared into the adjacent alleyways.

There was no time for relief, or even a thankful prayer. Kevin and Zoey struggled down the alley as fast as they could, a rather difficult task, considering their one hundred and eighty pound load. With Marty and Sugar following close behind them and only a few seconds to spare before the mercenaries gave chase, their options were quickly running out. Kevin didn't even recognize this part of the abandoned zone, and apart from a few skyscrapers looming overhead miles away, he had no idea how the ragtag group would even be able to make it out alive while carrying Nick.

Behind them, a chorus of shrill, panicked screams from the feral Sonees and Roseys was quickly interrupted by the sounds of a SAW light machine gun and a Benelli M4 shotgun firing. Kevin glanced over his shoulder in panic to see several of the baby chus exploding into little showers of blood droplets and flying viscera as the loyalists' vengeful gunfire tore them apart by the dozens. A flashbang grenade burst with a loud _pop_, stunning and disorienting the little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon and giving Herb and Goody even more time to carve their way out. Ben was nowhere to be found, though the young mercenary's safety was currently the least of Kevin's worries.

"Fuck! Goody, come on!" Patterson's voice rang through the streets. "COME ON! MOVE!"

"Over here! Over here!" Zoey hissed, and pulled Kevin and Nick into a little alcove, back behind a pair of dumpsters. "Marty, get in here!" She reached out and grabbed the little boy, yanking him out of the alley just as the beam of a flashlight clicked on. A few of the feral chus followed them into the hiding space, wailing and whining as they climbed into the dumpsters and huddled together around the Jerkops and Marty. It was all Kevin could do to keep from strangling a few of them, but their shrill screams would undoubtedly attract the attention of their pursuers.

"Stay quiet. Stay quiet," he whispered to Marty. The frightened child nodded and gently pushed away a Sonee who was trying to climb onto his lap. His heart pounding, the Jerkop glanced back at Zoey. "We need to be careful - they've got guns now."

"No, shit, Sherlock," hissed the squad leader under her breath, and picked up a smashed glass Coke bottle – a rarity in the days of the CWC Cola monopoly. "Here. There's more."

"Thanks." Kevin reached out and caught the broken bottle as Zoey threw it to him. "What now?"

"Wait." Zoey held up a shaking hand in the universal _don't move a muscle unless you want to die_ gesture. "They're coming. As soon as they go past, I'll lure them away. Marty, Sugar, you two stay with Nick. Kevin, go for the Hummer and _get our guns back._"

Kevin nodded and froze as the sound of footsteps slowed to a halt just a few yards away. The Sonee abandoned its attempt to climb on Marty and waddled toward the new noises, cooing and making little curious baby noises. A deafening burst of machine gun fire obliterated the baby chu before it could even scream, blasting its fat body into a chunky red stain on the adjacent wall. Clapping a hand over the little boy's mouth to silence his involuntary yell of surprise, Kevin held Marty close while Zoey stroked his hair, desperately trying to keep him calm as the noise faded.

"Fjandinn!" cursed Goody. "Why the hell didn't we bring Rory?"

Patterson muttered something to himself. Kevin could barely distinguish the words 'PVCC', 'Waters', and 'coward'. "I'll call this in. Judging by all the ferals we left back there, it's gonna turn into a feeding frenzy in the next minute or so. If anyone goes for the Hummer, we'll hear it."

_Oh, son of a bitch,_ the Jerkop thought to himself as he realized that the merc was utterly correct.

"We'll go around the block," said Patterson. "If they're not here, then fuck 'em. Stay close." He took a few steps toward the burst Sonee that Goody had just killed, then dashed down the alley.

"Go," whispered Zoey once the two mercenaries' footsteps had faded away. She pushed Kevin out of their hiding place and followed after him, leaving Marty, Nick, and Sugar behind the dumpster. "Sugar, silencer on, defensive mode. Marty, I don't want you leaving this spot, okay?"

The little boy nodded. In any other case, Kevin would have objected to leaving Marty on his own with a honey badger and an unconscious Jerkop for company. But the only way for himself and his friends to survive a trip through the heart of the abandoned zone was if they managed to get their weapons back from the loyalists. And that meant risking his life to save Nick and Marty.

"Don't take too long," ordered the squad leader, and vanished down the alley, bottle in hand.

As Kevin made his way back to the drop site, thoughts of Ben flashed through his head again and again, like a mantra of utter betrayal. The young mercenary's struggle against his superiors was just another subplot in the twisted story he'd woven, and the Jerkops had bought it completely. Somehow, he must have had a tracking device planted on him before he pretended to surrender, but how the Menchi-Nasu administrators had managed to miss it still remained a mystery. In any case, Kevin wasn't particularly looking forward to another encounter with Ben. If and when that happened, though, he knew that it wouldn't end well for the loyalist.

The Jerkop stepped around the corner and out into the open, keeping his broken bottle at the ready. It was a rather pathetic weapon when compared to Patterson's M16 and Goody's SAW, but in any case, it was better than nothing. Now that the element of surprise had been lost, the playing field had undergone a major shift in the favor of the loyalists. As for the ferals, well…

"YAY! Sonee! Sonee! Goo-gaa!"

"Sonee! YAY!"

"Goo-goo! Wosey!"

"Fuck me," whispered Kevin. The drop site was literally crawling with Sonees and Roseys – an immense squirming carpet of dirty, bloody yellow and pink fur. All of the babies that Sugar, the operatives, and the mercenaries had killed were now serving as a massive buffet for nearly two hundred eager, ravenous little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. The sickeningly sweet stenches of high-fructose corn syrup and blood rose from the corpses, wafting up into the Jerkop's nostrils.

To the north, a pair of Roseys were fighting over scraps of fatty flesh from one of the Sonees that Kevin had kicked into the wall. Nearby, a good two dozen larval chus were clustered around the corpses of the three fat Roseys, savagely gnawing at the flabby pink piles of bloody fuzz with squeals of joy, while a tiny Sonee wriggled its way into one of the corpses and began eating it from the inside out. Another Sonee, one with a broken stumpfoot, was now screaming in pain and trying to push away a trio of baby chus who were munching on its belly and lower body.

_They're starving,_ Kevin thought as he carefully made his way into the living minefield of feasting Sonees and Roseys. _They're running out of food. No wonder they're turning on each other._ The idea of the babies cannibalizing themselves into extinction was a pleasant one…until the Jerkop remembered the feral Rosechu and her miniature larvae out in the east jungle. If one feral could get out of the city, more would follow. And then…a global cataclysm would ensue.

Kevin hoped that the mercenaries had left a few high-explosive or incendiary grenades in the Humvee. The opportunity for a little feral population control was just too good to pass up.

"Kevin!" a hushed voice whispered. Startled, the operative looked to his right to see Ben approaching through the crowd of larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. Blood trickled from the mercenary's mouth, and the skin around his left eye was rapidly darkening. Patterson was a much more experienced fighter than him, and Ben seemed to have taken a few solid blows.

The Jerkop flipped the bottle around, preparing to stab Ben. "Get away from me, motherfucker."

"No!" The young soldier raised both hands, his eyes wide with shock. "Kevin, what are you-"

"Shut your fucking mouth, you backstabbing piece of shit," snarled Kevin, and reached for the door handle of the Humvee. Wrenching it open, he punched the unlock button on the door, then for good measure, popped the trunk to reveal two AK-47s, Nick's sniper rifle and machete, three Berettas, an assortment of clips and magazines, and three knives. With a sigh of relief, Kevin snatched up his assault rifle, George's knife, and his pistol, then returned his gaze to Ben.

The mercenary trembled. "Please, Kevin. Please. I didn't want any of this to happen."

"Shut up." The Jerkop grabbed Zoey and Nick's pistols and stowed them in his pants pockets. His shoulder sling would only hold one gun, and at the moment, Zoey's AK was the much more preferable option. He knew the sniper rifle had been Nick's weapon of choice since he'd joined the PVCC, but in such a dire situation, sacrifices had to be made. Loaded down with nearly all of the weapons the mercenaries had confiscated, he raised his assault rifle and whirled toward his prisoner, paying no heed to the Sonees and Roseys swarming into the Humvee's front seat.

"Kevin," Ben pleaded desperately. "You don't understand. We need to get out of here before th-"

Two deafening bursts from Goody's SAW echoed through the desolate streets, followed by a single blast from the M4 as the two mercenaries opened fire on something. A few seconds of silence passed by, and the Jerkop's blood nearly froze then and there. No. It couldn't be…

The gunfire resumed, louder and more intense than before. The loyalists were on the move, and judging by their change in position, it seemed as if they were chasing something, or someone.

"ZOEY!" Kevin shouted in panic, momentarily forgetting that he was supposed to be keeping quiet. Abandoning Ben, he dashed toward where the noise had come from, kicking and stomping his way through the swarm of feasting ferals. Several of the baby chus hurriedly activated their static cling and adhered their fat, dense little bodies to his legs, but in his haste, Kevin merely shook them off or trampled them until only a single Sonee remained, stubbornly clutching the Jerkop's right calf and gnawing on the tough leather of his combat boot with its toothless mouth.

"Sonee!" it squealed, frustrated by such an utterly stressful situation. "Goo-goo! Nee! Goo-gee!"

Dropping the AK-47's barrel, the Jerkop jabbed it down into the Sonee's eye socket, forcing it to let go. The baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon screeched in pain and rolled away, its green reptilian eyeball dangling by threads of optic nerve as blood sprayed from the circular wound. Kevin ignored its piteous shrieks and hurtled into the street, his heart hammering like a…

_BOOM!_

"AAAGGHHHH!" Kevin screamed and collapsed backward, knocked off his feet as something like a cannon blast caught him in the side of his bulletproof vest. Unable to stop himself due to the weight of so much equipment, he spun and landed on his side, smacking his left arm against a tipped-over garbage can. His chest burned, and blood was seeping into his shirt from a cut in his shoulder, but the Kevlar seemed to have stopped most of the buckshot. Any closer, and the M4 blast would have pulped his torso quicker than Gallagher's hammer meeting a watermelon.

"Juliet down! Juliet down!" roared Patterson as he and Goody bolted toward the fallen Jerkop. "I clipped him, Goody, put a few bullets into that son of a-"

The flying bottle crashed into the back of the mercenary's unprotected head, shattering into a dozen large fragments and instantly sending Herb stumbling forward, stunned by the sudden and excruciatingly painful blow. Before Goody could even turn around, Zoey slammed into her like a battering ram, dealing the female loyalist a crippling smash across the wrist with a thick piece of rusty pipe. The Icelandic woman staggered backward with a choking cry, her light machine gun clattering against the street as the Jerkop lunged again and took a vicious swing at her head.

This time, Goody was prepared. Leaping backward out of the way before the pipe could smash her skull open, she grappled for the pistol at her side, ripped it free of its holster, and managed to fire off a hasty shot that missed her opponent's shoulder by inches. Zoey hurled the pipe through the air and, anticipating the loyalist's dodge, drove her elbow into Goody's jaw. Another _crack_ echoed through the street as the pistol went off a second time, fired reflexively by the soldier as Zoey grabbed her arm and twisted it around, neatly disarming her and reaching out to grab the falling weapon. Before she could, though, Goody neatly twisted around and punched her in the gut, forcing them both apart as the pistol clattered away, out of reach.

Breathless and nearly paralyzed from the shotgun blast he'd just received, Kevin lay motionless, staring up in terror and awe as the two women circled each other, waiting for each other to make the first move. Gritting her teeth, the mercenary drew her combat knife again and twirled it in her hand, its blade still stained with larval chu blood.

"That little pussy's your boyfriend, huh?" she spat, glancing at Kevin through hate-filled eyes.

Keeping her gaze locked on Goody's, Zoey simply knelt down and picked up the pipe from where it had fallen. Her eyes narrowed. "My squadmate."

The loyalist chuckled. "Hate to keep you two apart for so-" Moving with surprising speed, she lunged straight at Zoey, catching the Jerkop off guard and driving the knife's blade straight at her throat. If Zoey hadn't brought up the pipe in time to stave off the attack, it would have sliced her jugular open. Wasting no time, she sidestepped and threw a punch at Goody's stomach, but missed as the soldier nimbly dodged out of the way.

"Clever. Oh, that's nice," hissed Goody. "Still amateur, little girl." She tossed the knife from hand to hand mockingly. "Free lesson of the day. Don't go all in on a two-on-one. HERB!"

"DON'T YOU FUCKING MOVE, PATTERSON!" a voice roared from behind Kevin. Rolling over, the Jerkop could barely make out a blurry figure in blue armor approaching from the drop site with Nick's sniper rifle clutched in his hands and aimed directly at Patterson's chest.

"You little son of a bitch!" The mercenary captain staggered to his feet, clutching the back of his head where a matted patch of bloody hair had appeared. He reached for his M16, completely disregarding Ben's threat. "You think I'm a goddamn fool, don't you, Waters? You think your little act got me _scared?_ The only things you've ever shot without me holding your hand all the way were your own fucking feet, you coward!" Raising the assault rifle, he took aim at Ben. "You want to stab your whole goddamn squad in the back, Waters? HAVE IT YOUR WAY!"

The air exploded in a storm of muzzle flashes and deafening bangs as the two mercenaries dove for cover and fired, sending rifle rounds zipping up and down the street while Zoey and Goody clashed together again and again in their vicious assault. Squeezing his eyes shut, Kevin crawled toward a large pile of crumbling bricks and garbage. If he could make it away from the shootout, it would be the best opportunity he'd ever get to send a few unexpected salvos toward Patterson.

"Wosey! SEY!"

"Gaa-gaa! YAY! Sonee! Nee!"

"Sonee! Goo-goo!"

"YAY! Seeeeeeeeeeee! YAY! WOSEY!"

Kevin froze. Beneath him, the ground seemed to be trembling, as if a small earthquake had struck the abandoned zone. A single Rosey popped its head out of a large open manhole adjacent to where the two women were fighting, then let out a happy "YAY!" and pulled its plump body out of the sewers. A Sonee followed, then another Sonee, then a Rosey, until the ferals were literally swarming out of the CWCville underground, attracted by the smell of fresh blood.

Paying no heed to the stunted pink and yellow crowd forming around her and her enemy, Zoey dodged a furious slash from Goody, dropped to one knee, and landed another direct hit by smashing the lead pipe into the mercenary's shin, right over the spot that she had kicked earlier. With a cry of agony, Goody raised her other foot and stomped down hard on Zoey's hand, grinding it down against the concrete as the Jerkop shrieked in pain and headbutted the loyalist soldier in the stomach. Goody went down with a stunned gasp, but managed to right herself and kick the fallen pipe out of the way. Laughing wickedly, she tossed the knife into her other hand and lunged down toward her now-disarmed opponent.

"ZOEY!" Flinging out his arm, Kevin sent Nick's machete clattering across the street, straight towards the dueling women. Zoey rolled away as the blade of Goody's knife struck the concrete with a scraping _clang_, flung out her arm, and managed to grab the machete's handle. Panting from utter exhaustion, the Jerkop pushed herself up off the street to avoid another slash from the enraged mercenary, whirled the menacing blade around, and swept it toward Goody's head.

_CLANG!_

"ENOUGH!" snarled the mercenary as she grabbed Zoey's wrist and twisted it, forcing the blade down into the hard concrete. Laughing madly, she spun the combat knife around and stabbed upward, hard. "GO TO HELL, DRUSLAN! GO TO HELL, YOU JERKOP SLUT!"

Kevin never heard his own scream of horror, or Zoey's pained gasp as the wicked blade pierced her abdomen and carried on into her stomach. He couldn't even hear the gunfire around him, or the happy squeals of the Sonees and Roseys that had gathered to watch the battle. The world had gone silent and still, and the only thing that he could feel now was the pounding of his own heart.

As if lost in a trance, Zoey stumbled backward, clutching her bleeding stomach as Goody stalked toward her to finish the job. Kevin looked on, paralyzed, unable to even reach for his pistol.

Wordlessly, the female mercenary lunged forward again and again, driving the blade into her foe's stomach again and again and laughing madly as the Jerkop's blood squirted over her hands. At long last, she withdrew her knife from Zoey and stepped back, grinning with satisfaction.

"Zoey," Kevin gasped, his voice just barely reaching the level of a whisper. "Zoey, no…no…"

In the time it took for Zoey to fall to her knees, Kevin could have leapt to his feet, hurled himself at Goody, and emptied his AK-47's magazine into the back of her head. But nothing seemed able to overcome the sudden paralysis that had taken hold of his body. It was as if he had been locked in place by some immense unseen force, unable to help his squad leader as she pitched forward and vomited onto the street, coughing up a gush of blood from her mutilated stomach.

"Disgusting," the mercenary panted, and picked up the machete to end Zoey's suffering once and for all. "Don't worry, little rebel, I'll make it all go away." She grinned and raised the blade.

"Kev…" coughed the dying Jerkop as she looked up at her horrified squadmate. "Kevin…run…"

Goody laughed and looked back. "Don't worry, I'll send your little boyfriend along. _Eventually_."

"RUN!" Zoey shouted, and hurled herself at the loyalist with a final, desperate burst of energy, fastening her arms around Goody's chest in a death grip and ripping the pins out of the four grenades on her belt. The mercenary's last laugh immediately gave way to a scream of panic as the wounded Jerkop tackled her to the ground, driving her backward by sheer momentum…

Directly into the open manhole.

Locked together in their eternal struggle, Zoey and Goody plunged headlong into the darkness. For a moment, only gunfire reigned in the world above. Then came a single bright light from below.

With a sound like a muffled cannon blast and an intense burst of heat, a plume of vicious flames erupted out of the blackness, engulfing any Sonees and Roseys standing adjacent to the abyss. The piercing screams of a hundred dying ferals echoed through the sewers below the abandoned zone, while up above, the burning baby chus waddled around in agony and despair, tripping, screaming, and setting fire to their comrades in pathetic attempts to extinguish their fiery fur.

Far beneath the streets of CWCville, the fire spread ever onward, devouring and consuming Sonees and Roseys by the dozens in its insatiable, vengeful hunger. Like tiny, shrieking fireballs, the swarm of blazing larvae squirmed helplessly and dropped dead, their final screams cut short by blistering, flickering, hungry flames. And when the last of the tiny burning bodies finally died out in a short puff of black smoke, the sewers returned to silence at last.

Illuminated by a circle of afternoon light from above, the victims of the Jerkop's last stand lay strewn about her tomb of rubble from where the sewer walls had buckled and collapsed in the explosion. One hundred and eighty-four dead Sonees and Roseys, claimed by fire and stone, consumed in a single brilliant blaze until nothing remained of the once-mighty horde but a few dozen survivors, a thick cloud of ash, and a blanket of little blackened corpses.

And beneath the smoking debris of her final resting place, Zoey Francesca lay in peace at last.

* * *

**Southeast CWCville, abandoned zone, alleyways, 3:38 p.m.**

"Gaa-gaa!"

"Wosey! Sey! Goo-goo!"

"YAY! Sonee!"

"GRROWR!" Sugarplum Fury snarled, bristling up and baring her bloody teeth. Another group of feral Sonees and Roseys was approaching from the alley, having grown bored of fighting with the main swarm over scraps of meat from the Feeding Day drop site. In the ten minutes since Kevin and Zoey had left, the voracious honey badger had racked up quite the impressive number of kills, leaving the small alcove decorated with scraps of bloody fur and pieces of baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. Nevertheless, the naïve larvae persisted in their exploration.

"Goo-gaa!" squeaked a Sonee as it appeared over the rim of the dumpster and stared down at the huddled group of fugitives. Its fat face split into an infuriatingly smug smile. "Sonee! Goo-goo!"

"Go away!" Marty yelled, and hurled a rock at the Sonee. A meaty thump sounded from above, followed by a frightened scream of "SONEEEEEEEEE!" as the baby chu toppled back and fell headfirst into the dumpster. There was a muffled _clang_, and then, blissful silence.

"Grrowr." Sugar sniffed the air and nuzzled the child's arm, wiping her bloody muzzle on his sleeve. Marty absentmindedly petted her behind the ears as he watched Nick's chest rise and fall with each shallow breath. The Jerkop wasn't doing too well, but at least he was still alive.

"I wish they'd come back," Marty murmured to the honey badger. "Do you think they're okay?"

As if to reassure him, Sugar cocked her head to the side and growled softly, then resumed watching the alley as the sounds of giggling Sonees and Roseys grew closer and closer. Gunfire continued to reverberate through the streets a block away from their hiding spot – the same place where Kevin and Zoey were fighting the mercenaries who had brought them all here to die.

"I just wanted to say thanks for getting me out of there," the little boy continued, looking at Nick and Sugar. His cheeks were smudged with dirt, and tear streaks ran down his face from his deep crimson eyes. "But I wannna go home, Sugar! I just wanna go home and see Mom again."

"YAY! Heeheehee! Goo-gee! Tee hee! YAY!" Another Sonee and a Rosey shuffled out of the alleyway, giggling and holding armstubs as if they were a pair of lovestruck teenagers instead of two hideously deformed mock-babies. At the sight of the two humans and the honey badger, the larvae paused for a moment, stared, then waddled forward, directly into the danger zone. Before Marty could even raise a finger to point them out, Sugar had leaped out of his arms, teeth bared.

"GRRROWR!" _CRUNCH!_ Before the Sonee could even shriek, the vicious little mammal had fastened her jaws around his head, piercing his fragile skull with her teeth. All it took was a single bite, and the fuzzy baby rodent suddenly found himself missing a large chunk of brain and the middle of his head. The Rosey screamed in terror, but was quickly silenced when Sugar rushed forward and pushed her over onto her back. Plunging both of her front paws into the wriggling larva's belly, she let out a savage snarl and wrenched the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's entire torso open lengthwise, exposing it ribcage through a thick layer of fatty tissue.

"WOSEEEEEEEEEEEY! WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!" screeched the Rosey, kicking and thrashing back and forth as the honey badger sank her teeth into the thin bones that formed her victim's ribs and cracked them all off in a single bite, then crunched them up like sticks of candy. Marty looked away in disgust as Sugar tore apart the little chu, focusing instead on a tattered old poster lying beside him. Reaching out, he grabbed the piece of paper and straightened it out, revealing an ugly caricature of Christian Weston Chandler being kicked in the rear by a much more appealing character – an attractive blond woman in a purple dress with horns and a tail…

"Mom?" he whispered in sudden realization and awe.

There was no question about it – the woman in the poster could have only been Mary Lee Walsh herself. Fascinated, the boy stared at the picture for a few more seconds, then looked down at the caption - **KICK HIS FAT ASS!** A sudden rush of pride surged through Marty as he finally grasped just how important his mother was to the city of CWCville and the people living under the rule of Chandler and his abominations. She was a symbol of freedom, of hope…of _rebellion_.

Footsteps sounded from the alley outside, accompanied by a chorus of apprehensive "goo-goo"s from the ferals. Marty held his breath, hoping that it was Zoey or Kevin, or maybe even Ben. The last option seemed the most likely, since the harsh rattle of gunfire was still echoing around the deserted streets and alleys. If not, and it turned out to be someone else, then the afternoon was about to get quite a bit more interesting, and most likely, quite a bit more terrifying, too.

Wordlessly, Kevin stepped into the alcove, clutching his AK-47 so tightly that his knuckles had turned white. Another AK was strapped across his back, and an assortment of knives and pistols had been shoved through his belt and into the pockets of his cargo pants. The Jerkop's face was frighteningly blank, but Marty could tell that something was troubling him immensely.

"Kevin?" he asked, tentatively taking a few steps toward the motionless operative. "What's wr-"

"She's gone," murmured Kevin. Sinking to his knees, he began removing the extra weapons and placing them all in a pile. Sugar looked up from the feral Rosey she had been devouring and trotted up to him, nuzzling his hand as though she could sense his pain.

"What? Who's gone?"

"Nothing," the Jerkop stated hastily, snapping out of his withdrawal with alarming speed. "We're getting you back to your mom, okay? Okay?"

"Okay," replied Marty shakily. "Aren't we gonna wait for Zoey and B-"

"They're fine," Kevin lied with surprising ease. "Don't worry about them. I'm just going to take you to the Library, we'll find out what happened, and then we'll all be safe again…" His voice broke and trailed off for a few seconds, before returning to its former state. "Marty, I'm gonna need you to help me carry some of this. We can't leave anything behind."

Marty looked around in confusion. "Can we call someone to pick us up? Mom said there's a-"

"My radio's broken." Kevin's mouth twisted into a bitter grimace as he reached into his pocket and withdrew a smashed walkie-talkie. "We're gonna have to walk right through the middle of the abandoned zone if we want to get to the Library. I'll carry Nick, and you stay close to me." Kneeling beside the unconscious sniper, he gingerly eased Nick's arms over his shoulders, as if giving him a piggyback ride, then hoisted him up with Marty's help and tucked the air tank under an arm. A stretcher would have been safer, but he had no other choice at the moment. "Sugar, come on. Defensive mode, escort."

"Grrowr!" The honey badger shook herself off and scurried after her substitute master, sniffing the air and scanning the alley for any Sonees or Roseys who dared to enter her attack range. Marty hesitated for a few moments, then picked up the bundle of pistols and knives and clumsily followed Kevin out of the alcove. Despite the Jerkop's reassuring lie, the little boy could sense that something had gone wrong…very wrong. He didn't know what had happened out there with the mercenaries, but what he _did_ know was that it had completely shattered Kevin's spirit.

The afternoon sun shone down through the empty, looming buildings of the abandoned zone as Kevin struggled onward, weighted down by Nick's body and the two AK-47s he was carrying. Sugar and Marty trailed close behind him, keeping watch in case any feral packs decided to investigate the pathetically small convoy of survivors. It was a small comfort to know that they might still survive the nightmarish encounter, but the Jerkop's mind was still locked in a near-constant state of what he could only describe as a perfect mix of shock and bitter denial.

There was no avoiding the horrible truth. Zoey was dead, and the Honey Badgers squad had now been cut down to just nine operatives. With Nick all but completely out of the picture, that left the Jerkops at a grand total of eight – himself, Steve, Allie, Kuri, Nate, Matt, Jexis, and Serge. And he wasn't even sure that they had all escaped with their lives, either. The thought of losing Matt, or Nate, or Allie…it almost made him want to just collapse again and never get back up.

But he couldn't do that. Not after losing so much. Mary Lee Walsh was depending on him to save her only son, and without Zoey or Steve or any of his squadmates, Kevin had been forced right into a position of leadership for his little group. Sugarplum Fury knew it too – she was obeying his orders promptly and without question, yet another testament to the honey badger's unyielding loyalty to her owners. That, or she just knew that the feral Sonees and Roseys would seek them out as easy targets. Either way, Kevin was glad to have her watching his back.

"Marty?" he asked, glancing back to where Marty was walking alongside Sugar.

The little boy looked up, startled. "What?"

"Come here. Let's just talk for a bit," the Jerkop offered, forcing his face into a friendly smile.

"Okay." Marty dashed forward and fell into step beside Kevin. "What do you wanna talk about?"

Kevin sighed. "Well, Mary told Steve and Zoey and I not to tell anyone that she's your mom, but since Nick's sleeping…could you tell me a little about yourself?"

"Sure," replied Marty, and touched his stubby horns timidly. "I dunno why I've got these, but Mom says that they're special and that I shouldn't show them to anyone. I've got a tail, too."

"What?" Kevin turned around to face the child, astonished. He had always wondered why Mary Lee Walsh had chosen a horned hairband and devil tail belt as part of her wardrobe. Now that he was talking with her son, though, the PVCC supreme commander's odd choice of accessories was starting to make sense. "Marty, did your mom ever tell you…about your f-"

_eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEE_

Lightning seared through the Jerkop's head, an intense pain that pierced the deepest center of his mind like a javelin. For a split second, the desolate street vanished in a flash of violet-white light, and Kevin glimpsed something in the distance - something that resembled the mouth of a cave.

"_Do not question that which you will never understand, pawn," _an ominous voice echoed from out of the darkness.

The light blazed again, and suddenly he was lying on his side in the street, gasping for air with Nick's limp body and the load of weaponry piled on top of him.

"Kevin!" Marty cried, and knelt beside the fallen operative. "Kevin, what happened?"

"I'm fine," Kevin panted, and struggled to his feet as cold droplets of sweat broke out across his forehead. Gritting his teeth, he managed to lift Nick again. "I think…it's just…I'm just tired…"

The little boy remained silent, staring directly into Kevin's eyes with a look of absolute dread. Alarmed, the Jerkop smiled weakly and patted Marty on the head, even as another painful stab lanced into his skull. "Hey. It's gonna be fine. Everything's gonna be fine. We've just gotta get-"

"SONEEEEEEEE! WAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"GOO-GEEEEEEE!"

"SEEEEEEEE! WOSEY! WAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

"Oh, fuck," breathed Kevin as an immense pack of feral Sonees and Roseys poured out of the shattered display windows of an abandoned Poké Mart just twenty yards up the street, many of them toppling down onto the street with surprised "Oof!"s as they smacked against the concrete. Spilling from the darkened building like a deluge of filthy, garishly-colored sewer rats, the larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon surged toward the group of survivors in a waddling, tripping flood of bloodstained yellow and pink fur. Kevin had never seen the ferals so utterly frenzied before.

There was no way he would be able to outrun such a large swarm, burdened as he was by Nick's body. Marty could easily make it out alive with Sugar, but unless Kevin left the unconscious sniper behind to be eaten, the babies would devour them both in a matter of minutes. Even if he managed to kill a few, what little energy remained in his body was quickly fading away with every labored breath. Both fight and flight, it seemed, would lead to death.

"Marty," he coughed, and placed Nick's body on the street behind him. Drawing his AK-47, he pressed the stock against his shoulder and took aim at the forefront of the horde. "Marty, run."

"KEVIN!" screamed the little boy, and dashed forward, throwing his arms around the Jerkop's waist. "Kevin, please don't! Give me a gun! Sugar and I can hold them off! We can stop them!"

"Sugar," ordered Kevin, staring at the honey badger intensely. "Escort Library."

"GRRROWR!" snarled Sugar, and whirled to face the oncoming tide of baby chus. "ROWWR!"

"DIRECT ORDER, SUGAR!" the Jerkop roared. "ESCORT LIBRARY! GO! GET OUT OF-"

"SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!"

"SONEEEEEEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"What…the…FUCK!?" Kevin shouted, nearly tripping backward over Nick's body as the scaly hooded head of a monstrous Arbok emerged from the shattered front entrance of the Poké Mart. Hissing angrily, the ravenous snake Pokémon slithered out of the building and into the street, its powerful tail coiled around a single struggling Sonee. As its tiny fuzzy prey kicked and screamed helplessly, it constricted itself tightly around the feral and let out a vicious roar. The Sonee only had time for a single piercing shriek before its tiny body was reduced to a blood-soaked lump of splintered bones and pulped meat and organs, mixed with yellow fur and battery-blue plastic.

Lashing out with its muscular tail, the Arbok hurled the Sonee's remains into the crowd of panic-stricken ferals, splattering four of the baby chus with blood, bone shards, and bits of flesh. As the frightened screams and cries of the terrified Sonees and Roseys echoed around it, the hungry Pokémon lunged forward almost too quickly for the eye to follow, quickly catching a little Rosey that had tripped and was struggling to get back up. In a flash, the pink-furred hoglet was wailing and writhing in the Arbok's mouth, shuddering as the venomous fangs penetrated its pudgy, incredibly vulnerable body again and again. With another roar, the massive purple snake jerked its head around and shattered the Rosey's spine, then unhinged its jaw and swallowed the larva.

"ARBOK!" it snarled, and launched itself into the swarm once again. Kevin, Marty, and Sugar stood their ground, watching in astonishment as the Arbok growled and snapped and tore half a dozen infant chus apart in the first assault alone. Blood and saliva dripped from the serpentine predator's curved fangs, running down its face in rivers while it feasted on the helpless baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. Its scaly body was thin and nightmarishly emaciated, its eyes were little more than milky white slits, and its ribcage was clearly visible through thin layers of grey, filthy skin. In short, the Arbok looked like it had been living out in the abandoned zone for years.

Silently and slowly, Kevin shouldered his AK-47, knelt beside Nick, and heaved his squadmate's body back up onto his shoulders, making sure not to attract any unwanted attention from the berserk Arbok. Marty ran behind him for protection as the crowd of Sonees and Roseys scattered and waddled past, paying no heed to the humans or the honey badger in their panic. Step by step, the Jerkop made his way up the street, circling around the edge of the slaughter and hoping that the Pokémon wouldn't notice them before they managed to slip away.

"SSSSSSSSS!"

Kevin froze, and slowly turned to face the Arbok as it let out another aggressive hiss. Swaying back and forth while the surviving feral Sonees and Roseys dispersed into the safety of their dumpsters, garbage cans, and manholes, the six-foot predatory Pokémon spread its hood open and opened its jaws to reveal two bloodstained rows of fangs as long as Kevin's little finger.

"Arceus," he whispered, and took another step away. "Marty, don't look at it. Don't look…"

"AAAAARRRRRBOK!"

"OH, SHIT!" screamed Kevin as the serpent lowered its head and charged, slithering across its killing grounds and leaving a trail of tiny fuzzy corpses and entrails in its wake. There wasn't even enough time for him to reach for his pistol. Like some horrific beast from out of the underworld, the Arbok reared in front of him and spread its hood, hissing as it prepared to strike.

"GRRROWR!" Using the Jerkop's shoulder as a springboard, Sugar launched herself into the air and pounced at the ravenous predator's face, snarling viciously as she collided with the Arbok and dug her claws into its fearsome hood. Caught completely off guard by the honey badger's attack, the giant snake toppled over and thrashed, swinging its heavily muscled tail to and fro. Sugar clamped her jaws onto the back of its neck and held on for dear life as the Pokémon hissed and fought and tried to throw her off. Back in her homeland, she'd killed dozens of snakes this way. To her, the Arbok was just a larger, stronger, and _slightly_ more challenging foe.

Kevin retreated quickly, pulling Marty out of the way as the Pokémon's deadly tail slammed down against the street, half a foot away from striking the little boy. As Sugar bit and scratched at her foe's unprotected hood, the Jerkop hurriedly placed Nick back on the ground and drew his assault rifle, then cursed as he realized he wouldn't be able to open fire on the Arbok without risking Sugar's life. His mind racing, Kevin quickly scanned the streets. He couldn't shoot the Pokémon, and he certainly couldn't attack it at close range and risk being bitten, constricted, or otherwise maimed by the serpent's frantic struggles. The stores seemed like the kind of place where he could find something useful, but all of the ones he could see had been boarded up or otherwise barricaded - except for a diner, a hardware store, the Poké Mart…

"MARTY, STAY HERE!" Kevin yelled as he sprinted across the battleground and through the doorway leading into the Poké Mart. The sounds of Sugar's snarling and the Arbok's frenzied hisses and roars echoed through the street behind him, further adding to the Jerkop's escalating panic. Desperately shoving dusty piles of training manuals and boxes of long-expired Full Heals and Revives aside, he tore through shelf after shelf, ignoring the clouds of dust and cobwebs that had spread throughout the store during its eight years of abandonment and looting.

Something soft and sticky crunched beneath him as he stepped down. Looking down, Kevin was disgusted to find half of a Rosey's mutilated corpse stuck to the bottom of his boot. The store was literally blanketed with dozens of dead baby chus and tiny skeletons, as well as great piles of shed snakeskin. The Arbok had been living on its own for quite some time, it seemed.

"KEVIN!" Marty yelled from outside. "KEVIN, COME ON! PLEASE!"

"Where…are…you…you…little…_fuckers?"_ snarled Kevin as he furiously kicked the desiccated carcass of a Sonee into the wall, where it burst in a cascade of dust and dried-up skin. Pushing over an entire display case, he rifled through a rack of vitamin pills, then moved on to the next shelf. They couldn't have all been looted – not in the abandoned zone. There had to be _some_ left.

Outside, Sugar let out a shrill yelp of pain. Kevin whirled around just in time to see the Arbok's fangs slice across the honey badger's tough little body, breaking the skin. Shaking off the painful injury, Sugar dropped to the street and leapt back to avoid another fierce bite from the Pokémon. She wobbled around shakily, making soft growls as the venom attacked her from the inside.

"Arrrrrbok…" hissed the Arbok victoriously. Spreading its hood, it snaked its tail forward and looped the end around Sugar's torso, drawing the honey badger into its steely coils. Its emaciated body dripped with blood, and the battle had worn out most of its strength, but at least it still had enough left to finish off this tough little meddling black and white furball…

"DON'T YOU FUCKING DO IT, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

The Arbok twisted towards the shout and narrowed its pure white eyes, focusing in on the front of the store. Kevin leapt down into the street, gritting his teeth and clutching a pair of small red and white spherical objects, one in the palm of each hand. Holding one up in the air, he tapped the button in its center, menacingly increasing the object's size to that of a grapefruit.

"Bok?" The Pokémon drew back cautiously, watching as the Jerkop advanced on it with the dusty ball raised to throw. Hissing, it tightened its grip on Sugar's torso. "ARBOK!"

"Yeah, that's right," snapped Kevin, and flung the Poké Ball with all the energy he could muster.

"GRRROWR!" Sugar tumbled free of the Arbok's coils as the flying projectile smacked it right in the face and automatically split open along its hinged edge. In a flash of white light, the Poké Ball had lanced out with a bolt of energy, ensnaring the struggling Pokémon and dragging the entire six-foot serpent into the small red and white sphere, just like the traps from _Ghostbusters_.

Kevin and Marty watched with anticipation, waiting as the little ball twitched back and forth on the street. The captured Arbok was trying to break free, and the Jerkop had no idea how much power remained inside the Poké Ball. Pressing the center button on the second capture device, he took another few steps forward and snapped into a pitching stance, just like he'd always done on his baseball teams back in middle and elementary school. If both the first ball and the backup failed, then he would have no choice but to shoot the Arbok before it killed them all.

The Poké Ball twitched a final time, and lay still. Kevin exhaled slowly, keeping a watchful eye on the sphere as he walked up and nudged it with his foot. As if handling an unstable bomb, the Jerkop knelt down beside it, reached out, and picked it up. Sensing his touch, the little device immediately shrank into its portable mode and blinked, alerting him of a successful capture.

"Kevin?" Marty asked nervously, gently picking up the wounded honey badger as she stumbled towards him. Sugar's breathing had grown shallow and erratic, but apart from the venom in her system, she seemed to be coping with her injuries rather well. "Is it gone? Is the snake gone?"

"No, Marty," Kevin murmured as an immense grin spread across his face. "It's not gone." He attached the Poké Ball to his belt, nearly collapsing with happiness and relief as the sheer weight of what he'd just done struck him from all angles simultaneously. "It…it's…mine."

"Okay…" The little boy scratched his head nervously, glancing around as a dozen tiny pairs of green reptilian eyes locked onto him, Kevin, Nick, and Sugar. Now that the apex predator of that section of the abandoned zone had been dealt with, the ferals would soon realize that the wild Arbok's reign of blood and terror had reached its end. And when that happened, the fugitives didn't want to be anywhere closeto the district when the swarm finally managed to regroup. "Kevin, can we get out of here, please? I don't like this place…"

"He's right," a familiar voice spoke up. "We need to move before they pick up our trail."

Kevin's momentary joy at the capture of his first Pokémon turned to ash as soon as he realized who was addressing them. The memory of Zoey's last stand came rushing back like a tidal wave of sorrow, pain, and hatred, filling his heart with icy rage. Trembling with suppressed fury, he turned to see a weary and exhausted Ben slowly approaching from a small alleyway. The young mercenary was still clutching Nick's sniper rifle, but didn't seem like he was willing to use it anytime soon. And the Jerkop had no problem with that whatsoever.

"Patterson's gone," Ben continued, breathing heavily as drops of sweat ran down his smudged face. Slowing to a halt in front of Kevin, he glanced over his shoulder and nodded. "Took the Hummer and left. I clipped him, though. Odds are, we're not going to be seeing him for a-"

_WHAM!_ Even if the soldier hadn't been suffering from fatigue and had still been at full strength, only the sharpest of reflexes would have saved him from the Jerkop's vicious punch. Ben hit the ground with a meaty thud, wheezing and clutching the side of his head where Kevin's fist had connected with his jaw. Blood dripped from the corner of his mouth as he hurriedly struggled to regain his lost footing, but a heavy kick to his abdomen sent the mercenary sprawling flat again.

"You cocksucking little traitorous son of a bitch," snarled Kevin as he stepped forward, rubbing his aching fist while Ben spluttered and coughed at his feet. "You should've stopped after the first go, you fucking backstabber. What, did you think I'd _forget?! _Did you think I'm _Chandler?_ I heard what those two chu-fucking friends of yours said. You sold us out, you slimy little piece of Sonee shit! YOU GOT OUR FUCKING SQUAD LEADER KILLED, YOU BASTARD!"

Before Ben could choke out a response, Kevin delivered another kick to his prone body, this time right to the small of the back. With a loud groan, the mercenary convulsed on the ground, rolling onto his back to grab the Jerkop's leg. Gritting his teeth, Kevin merely raised his other boot to step on Ben's windpipe, but before he could, the world tilted sideways. Moments later, the hard asphalt rushed up to meet him.

"I…didn't…do…it…" wheezed the soldier, crawling away from the furious Jerkop as Kevin leapt upright and stalked forward, gripping his scraped left elbow. "KEVIN! KEVIN, I DI-"

"SHUT UP! SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Kevin roared, and slammed his fist into Ben's stomach. The world had turned from grey and brown to a frightening deep red haze, as if he was staring through a pair of blood-colored glasses. "You betrayed us. You got Zoey killed. Now…" He flipped the knife around in his hand and knelt down on Ben's chest, pinning him to the ground. Gripping the struggling mercenary by his shoulder, Kevin hauled him upright and seized him by the throat in a death grip. Any hesitation he might have felt had simply evaporated into pure rage the moment Zoey had fallen. "Now…you get to tell her…what she died for."

"NO! PLEASE! KEVIN, PLEASE!" shouted Ben as the steely fingers wrapped around his neck. "ARCEUS, I SWEAR I DIDN'T KNOW! I DIDN'T KNOW THEY WERE FOLLOWING-"

"You think _she_ begged?" The Jerkop paused. "Zoey didn't die begging." He closed his hands tighter, slowly crushing Ben's windpipe and cutting off his frantic yells. "Goodbye, Ben."

_eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEE_

The piercing light blazed through Kevin's mind again, plunging him into a world of intense and absolute darkness. Orange energy swirled before his eyes, flaring and pulsing chaotically as if he were staring into a kaleidoscope of madness. Part of him was trying to convince himself that it was nothing, nothing more than the fatigue manifesting into a form of mental pain. The other part was currently straddling a fine line between confusion and brick-shitting insanity.

And from the darkness, an irritatingly nasal voice spoke.

"_Legendary Crystals, hear my call, as a child of Electric Energy, of all those who were brainwashed by Slaweel and Graduon, release them free of their control forever, and let them live free to love and feel love again. CHAOTIC CONTROL!"_

"KEVIN!"

_WHUMP!_ Kevin crashed to the ground as Marty slammed into him from the side, knocking the Jerkop right off of Ben and forcing him to release his grip on the dying mercenary's throat. Dizzy from the shock of what he could only describe as a complete mental breakdown, Kevin flopped over onto his back, his chest rising and falling swiftly as he gasped for breath. Flaring pain pounded through his skull like a migraine headache, forcing him to squeeze his eyes shut until it subsided. There had been something else…a strange vision. An orange Sonichu stood atop the highest building in CWCville, surrounded by waves of rippling psychic energy…

It was hard for Kevin to pinpoint the exact time when he opened his eyes again, but when he did, the sun had already begun its descent into the western sky. Evening had come to the city, and judging by the chorus of jubilant "YAY!"s echoing through the deserted streets and alleys of the abandoned zone, the entire district was growing more and more dangerous by the minute.

"Arceus," he coughed, and rolled onto his side. "What…the hell…just…happened?"

"Grrowr!" Sugar darted up to him like a fuzzy black and white missile, nuzzling his face and hands and growling concernedly as the Jerkop dizzily pushed himself into a sitting position. Marty lay curled beside him, his mouth hanging open and his face resting in a puddle of drool, while Ben lay face down in the street a few feet away, bloodied and bruised. Further away, Nick was still barely breathing, though his air tank was almost certainly running low by now.

"Oh, fuck," gasped Ben as he rolled over onto his side. "Oh God, my fucking _head_…"

"You…too?" Kevin asked weakly. "What happened? Did you see a-"

"A Sonichu, yeah." Shivering, the mercenary sat up and looked around, just as confused as the Jerkop who had just tried to kill him. "I heard a voice…there was a voice right inside my head."

"I did too," replied Kevin. _"All those who were brainwashed by Slaweel and Graduon, release them of their control forever…"_

"Do you…" Ben started, his voice trembling with uncertainty. "How…how do you feel?"

Kevin gave his head a final shake and rose to his feet, swaying back and forth as his dizzy brain quickly recalibrated itself. "I'll live. If that was 'un-brainwashing', then it didn't fucking work."

"No one told me anything about _that_," mused Ben, and winced as the tendons in his lower back popped. "That…fucking…_hurt_."

"What do you mean, 'no one told you about that'?" Kevin growled, bristling up as memories of the vicious fight flooded back into his head. "You _work_ for Chandler. How the hell do you not-"

"I _worked_ for him, okay?!" shouted the mercenary, putting particular emphasis on the past-tense ending. His voice was nearly at the breaking point. "Did you _see_ what happened at Tripod? He left them behind to die! HE LEFT US BEHIND!"

Kevin bit back his spiteful retort. "I…I know, Ben. I was there. I saw him abandon those men."

"Do you get it now, Kevin?" Every one of Ben's pained words dripped with guilt and shame. If he was faking it, the merc had to be the absolute greatest actor in history. "I can't go back to all that. I can't do it. Feeding Days, straight camps, all for what? For blood money? For hookers?" He paused, letting his inner pain spill forth like water from a burst dam as the Jerkop watched in shock. "Every day, I feel like I'm a traitor to my own fucking species!" He slumped forward, heaving with sobs. "You don't know what it's like. You…you've been the good guys all along!"

"I…Ben, I…" The words caught in Kevin's throat, and for a few seconds, he had no idea what to even say to the distraught soldier. Taking a deep breath, he stepped forward and held out a hand. "I'm sorry, Ben. I'm sorry. Come on, I'm not gonna hurt you. I'm never gonna hurt you again."

Ben nodded, reached out, and grasped the Jerkop's offered hand. Silently, Kevin pulled his new ally to his feet and shook hands with him, fixing the former mercenary with a determined gaze. In that single moment, everything clicked together. Ben had had a chance to run, to leave the Jerkops and Marty behind to their fate. But he had returned to save them, not simply out of a need for vengeance against Patterson, but a desire to help end the bitter turmoil that CWCville had languished in for a decade. And where Kevin had been so quick to demonize Ben for letting his former squadmate murder Zoey, Marty had realized the truth, and attempted to stop him.

"Thank you," Ben coughed. "Kevin, I'm so sorry about Zoey. I…I couldn't stop Goody, and…"

"Don't apologize," replied Kevin, and held up a hand. "Listen. The PVCC won't let something like this go unanswered. We're going to strike back at Chandler, and when we do, you're going to get that chance you wanted. If you help us…if you come with us, I'll make sure that happens."

"I just realized something, you know?" Ben replied as he bent down and picked up the snoring Marty. "I always wanted to be somebody. Make a name for myself, protect the people. It's why I joined this so-called 'anti-terrorist group' in the first place." Carrying the little boy in his arms, he stepped over to where Kevin was lifting Nick off the ground for what seemed like the hundredth time in the last few hours. "And working for CWCville - no, working for Christian Chandler... I've just become another damn pawn. Just a nobody, carrying out the bloody errands of the big boss in his pet town, doing whatever he pleases."

"You're not the only one who thinks he's just another damn pawn," Kevin muttered under his breath as he gathered his dropped weapons together. The vision of the cave still burned in his memory, almost as brightly as the vision of the orange-furred psychic Sonichu. "Ben, did you ever wonder if this war's just a front…that there's something going on behind the curtains that we don't even know about?"

Ben paused. "Not…really. I mean, I know the city council's been doing stuff like that…Anna and Rocky mostly, but…are you sure you're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm fine. Just a thought." Kevin set off at a fast walk as the former mercenary followed.

"Well, like I was saying," Ben continued hastily, "I felt like a nobody, but you... you guys are the ones putting your asses on the line so that the people of this city can live to be free and safe. It's you guys who aren't afraid…afraid like I was."

"You're wrong," replied Kevin, remembering the deep, chilling fear he'd felt back at the Feeding Day drop site, handcuffed and surrounded by ferals. "Everyone's afraid. Some people just learn to hide it better than the rest of us."

The pair continued on in silence, crossing block after block as they made their way across the darkening abandoned zone. Kevin's thoughts drifted from place to place, never able to focus on just one subject without returning to the events that had taken place just a few hours earlier. Zoey's death, he knew, would not go over well with any of the Honey Badgers, least of all Steve. After Amanda's death, Kevin was beginning to see his commander in a whole new light, and he wasn't exactly sure if it was a perspective he was comfortable with. There wasn't even a body to bury or cremate, and given the fact that Steve had nearly started a fight with Al himself, Kevin was silently dreading the Manajerk's reaction to hearing that his friend had been lost to mercs.

As for Marty, it was only a matter of returning the boy to Wilderness or wherever his mother had ended up after fleeing Menchi-Nasu. Kevin knew that she had stayed behind to face Chandler's ludicrously disproportionate vengeance, but judging by how easily Sonichu had defeated the PVCC commander in single combat, Mary Lee Walsh would end up retreating in the end.

But most importantly to the Jerkop, Benjamin Waters had become more than just a faceless servant of Chandler's tyranny, more than just another hired gun of the True Blue. The man had stared into the heart of darkness and pushed through to challenge the doctrine he'd sold himself into for so many years. Now that he had seen the terror he had helped to wreak upon the innocents of CWCville, he was ready to fight back, to redeem himself in the eyes of the city.

And Kevin was going to make sure he got the chance to do just that.

* * *

**North CWCville, Northern district, Menchi-Nasu, administrator meeting room, 4:03 p.m.**

"_Evacuation alert, last stage," _announced Menchi-Nasu's PA system as Mary Lee Walsh stood at the ready, coolly awaiting her fate at the hands of her former charge. _"If any PVCC personnel remain inside, this is your final warning. Hostiles have breached the inner def-"_

Vivian Gee's recorded voice died with a crackle of static. With the last of the S.A.V. units and automated turrets dealt with by Angelica Rosechu, the remaining EHPF troops were focusing on zapping every electronic device they could find in the empty PVCC base. Only Walsh remained behind, and since all of the Jerkop squads stationed at Menchi-Nasu had been successfully evacuated, she could very well have escaped at any time she wanted. But there was one last loose end she needed to tie up if the resistance was to survive.

Ominous footsteps sounded outside her door, and Mary Lee Walsh knew that her time had come at last. Drawing a deep breath to steady her nerves, she turned her back to the doorway, closed her eyes, and stared at the collection of objects arranged on the meeting room's conference table. Graduon's staff sat propped up by a steel stand, pulsing furiously as the ancient spirit silently roared curses into her mind to no avail. Beside them lay her horned battle helm, her trident, and her jetboard that Chandler had so naïvely confused for a broom. All was ready. All was arranged.

"Unlock inner defenses," she stated clearly. "Password…_Marty_."

With a loud hiss and a metallic clang, the blast panels slid open, exposing the normal doorway to the administrator meeting room. Walsh heard the handle turn and an annoyed sigh from the other side. Her final line of defense would keep Chandler out for at least another minute. It had been a rather easy measure to concoct – an outward-opening door labeled **PUSH** – but at least it would give her one last laugh if her final defeat was to come at the hands of the Mayor.

"_Traitorous ingrate,"_ hissed Graduon. _"I gave you power, I gave you strength, I gave you your life back, and you turn against me! You will regret this, Slaweel! You will regret this!"_

"The one thing I regret, Count," snarled Walsh, "is discovering that cave in the first place." She stared directly into the staff's orb and narrowed her scarlet eyes. "I haven't forgotten how you took me all those years ago. You thought I was your servant, that I would do anything to appease you. But not anymore, Graduon. Not anymore. And you will never, _ever_ take Marty from me."

"_And what will you do then, Slaweel?"_ scoffed the spirit. _"You know you cannot destroy me. Our child will be my resurrection, one way or another. What are you but mere threats and lies?"_

"I'm something that even you will never be, or understand, Count," murmured Mary Lee Walsh, and smiled as the door finally creaked open. She exhaled. "So, the time has finally come, yes? Our final confrontation?"

There was no answer – only labored breathing from the figure who stood in the doorway. The PVCC commander chuckled silently to herself. Christian had never been a very logical thinker.

"I am not surprised," she continued, playing up the fake "heartless witch" persona that her foe so dearly loved to delude himself into believing. "It only seems like it was yesterday when I was deemed a social outcast by the live, spoken words of a hundred men and women. Not one person would ever show me true love or devotion again…" She picked up her helm and fastened it onto her head. "Then I turned to witchcraft, so I could change all of their opinions of me…love potions, makeover spells, cheerleader sacrifices…none of them worked more than squat. Then I found the wand that contained Count Graduon."

"_What is this nonsense?" _the trapped spirit hissed, but Walsh ignored him.

"He promised to help me seek revenge on all who shared love…" she lied, trying her hardest to suppress the wave of pitying laughter that threatened to explode from her throat. Christian was buying every word she said. So pathetic. So…_naïve_. "If I couldn't be loved, no one would. So I built the fake college to bring in and brainwash foolish individuals to do my bidding. And now they are themselves again, out of my grasp, thanks to you and your Electric Hedgehog."

The commander nearly lost it then and there. Ultra Sonichu's "un-brainwashing" had worked about as well as expected – not at all. But as always, Chandler had managed to convince himself that his plan had been flawless, and that a few such acts would defeat the entire PVCC. And all the blame-shifting would mean nothing when stacked against the innocents who had died in 4-cent_garbage, or the deaths of Jason, Kathleen, Clyde, and Jack. An act of vengeance was already in the works, thanks to the Asperpedia team and Simonchu.

"Your stubborn, dumb Sweetheart Search irritated me among all others," growled Walsh, this time speaking the truth. How many innocent boyfriend-free girls had he approached without her knowledge, back in the days when PVCC had meant nothing more than the Piedmont Virginia Community College? How many of those girls had died on October 7, 2003? "You kept going with such a strong will and spirit. I had no such will or spirit. I also realized that there was still one man who goes unpunished of my hatred…the Count. I will fight you with my power alone."

"_WHAT?"_ screamed Graduon as his voice pierced her mind. _"SLAWEEL, WHAT ARE YOU S-"_

"Please do your will and release the Count for me to punish another day," Walsh stated. "Do it, Christian Chandler." She turned and held out the staff, beholding her mortal enemy at long last.

The malformed creature that stood before her nearly took her breath away with its hideousness. What she assumed was supposed to be her foe's ultimate form was nothing more than a hybrid "chuman" - a disturbing synthesis of the athletic, speedy body of Chris-Chan Sonichu and the pudgy, flabby body that Chandler carried around in his human form. He wore only a pair of jeans that he had somehow failed to put on facing the right way, shoes, a belt, and an orange Sonichu medallion, while his upper body and head were covered in blue and brown fur and sharp quills. A Sonichu's tailbolt poked through the front of his pants (which actually faced the rear), and a red cheekspot stood out on either side of what looked like a patch of fuzzy, scraggly facial hair.

In short, Collosal Chris-Chan had not impressed Mary Lee Walsh in the slightest.

Without a word, Chandler reached out and grasped the staff, pulling it out of his former dean's hand to examine. Unable to channel his dark energy through his former ally, all Graduon could do was scream and curse and send out wild stabs of psychic power that Walsh simply shrugged off. The task was almost complete. If Chandler took the bait, her son would be safe at last…

Whirling the staff around in his hand, Colossal Chris-Chan drove the purple crystal straight into the floor of the administrator meeting room, silencing Graduon's final scream of rage and failure. The orb shattered instantly with a crack like thunder and released a cloud of violet smoke into the air, where it quickly dissipated into the air.

Walsh paid no attention to her hideous opponent as he delivered his pathetic rebuttal. Her task was complete, and soon, the final battle would begin. And then, at last, the Mayor would fall.

"…yet you will not be forgiven for your deeds, Slaweel Ryam!" ranted Chandler, his pudgy face screwed up in intense concentration as he conjured two replicas of the _God of War _Blades of Chaos out of pure energy and lunged forward to attack. "YOUR TERROR ENDS HERE!"

_Be safe, Marty,_ Walsh thought as she raised her trident.

* * *

**Southeast CWCville, abandoned zone, PVCC Library HQ, debriefing office, 4:21 p.m.**

"You know how lucky you are?" a PVCC science officer asked the unconscious Marty as two emergency personnel wheeled Nick off into the hospital wing of the Library HQ for surgery and stabilization. "A kid his age alone in the abandoned zone – you'd better thank Arceus that you two found him." He patted the sleeping boy on his baseball cap, then looked at Kevin and Ben. "We'll take care of your squadmate, don't worry. Whoever treated his lung did one hell of a good job, but he's gonna need intensive care if he ever wants to breathe without tubes again."

"Thanks," mumbled Kevin as Ben gently placed Marty onto the room's padded examination table, making sure to adjust the CWCville Lancers cap to conceal his stubby horns. They'd found the ratty old thing on their way to the Library, and it was only a matter of sheer luck that the PVCC medics hadn't demanded to examine Marty. The child had been unconscious since the psychic announcement had been broadcast across the city, and the two men still weren't sure why his reaction had been so severe. Kevin just hoped that Marty hadn't slipped into a coma.

"Now, as for you two," the PVCC scientist continued, and picked up a clipboard and a pen. Kevin managed to steal a glimpse at his nametag as he turned - Dr. Bruce Johnson. "Let's take it from the top. We've got a lot to cover in terms of what went down today, but why don't you just tell me everything that happened to you after you were evacuated out of Menchi-Nasu."

Taking a deep breath, Kevin relayed the events of the past two hours, from the point where the Javelin had hit the Battle Bus, to the fight at the Feeding Day drop site, to Zoey's death, to the Arbok, Sonichu's psychic declaration of un-brainwashing, and their journey to the Library. He made sure to leave out any mention of Ben's allegiance with the loyalists, as well as their duel, and never described Marty as any more than "just some kid we found wandering out there."

"You two went through quite an experience out there," Johnson commented, visibly intrigued by Kevin's tale. "I'll see about arranging a transport to Slumberland for you and the boy. And what squad were you with?" He glanced at Ben curiously. "Hell, I don't think I even got your name."

"Benjamin Waters. I'm a Honey Badger, like him," replied the former mercenary, and nodded at Kevin as he recited the planned alibi they'd thought up. "They might not have me listed yet."

"Well, we'll have to see about fixing that," muttered Johnson. "Arceus, after today, we're gonna need all the new Jerkops we can get." He paged through his clipboard once again. "And your Manajerk would be…hold on, that can't be right. I just talked with him fifteen minutes ago…"

"It's all right, Bruce," a familiar voice cut in. "Go and check on Leary again. I'll handle this."

Johnson smiled and rose to greet the newcomer. "Speak of the devil. How's the lab, Ledger?"

"We're still isolating that little compound I told you about earlier," replied Albert Ledger as he stepped into the room and clapped Johnson on the shoulder. The former Manajerk was almost unrecognizable without his welder's mask, and the brown trench coat he adored so dearly had been replaced by a white lab coat. He looked healthier, fitter, and far more self-confident than he had been when he'd left the Honey Badgers. Furthermore, the smell of three kinds of alcohol no longer surrounded him. In short, it appeared that the Legend had pulled himself together at last.

"AL?" Kevin gasped, astounded by his old commander's sudden arrival. "What…"

"Nice to see you too, Kevin," replied Al, and strode forward to shake the Jerkop's hand. For a moment, the dark memories of Zoey's death and the Battle of Menchi-Nasu simply disappeared from Kevin's mind, washed away by waves of joy and relief. Against all odds, he had braved the horrors of the abandoned zone and emerged victorious, with a new comrade, his first Pokémon, and Mary Lee Walsh's son all alive and unharmed. And even though Nick Martinez would most likely never fight again, the wounded Jerkop was safe at last…safe and alive.

But like all moments of happiness, it eventually had to come to an end. The Legend's wide smile quickly faded as soon as the handshake ended, and was replaced by a look of bitter resentment. He gave a curt nod to Johnson, who obediently left the room to allow the Jerkops some privacy.

"I know you just stepped out of hell, Kevin," he began in a grave voice, "but you _need_ to hear this. The attack on Tripod and the Battle of Menchi-Nasu were only the beginning."

Kevin felt the hairs prickle up on his arms at Al's words. "Wait. Al, wait a second."

The Legend paused. "Yes?"

"There…there's something I need to tell you first," Kevin fought back a sudden flood of tears as Ben and the former Manajerk looked on in silence. "Al…Zoey's dead."

Al closed his eyes and exhaled. The look on his face almost made the Jerkop want to vanish then and there, if only to escape from the Legend's twisted expression of deep, inescapable pain. And still he pressed on, repeating the same story that he had told to Johnson, but with the censored parts intact. Al didn't even look up when Kevin told him about Ben's true identity and the revelation about Marty. The reality of Zoey's death seemed to have paralyzed him.

When the story ended and the Legend finally opened his eyes, his new aura of wellness and vigor had almost entirely vanished. Guilt rushed through Kevin like a chilling wave. He immediately regretted ever telling Al about Zoey.

"Al, I…I didn't mean…" he began, but Al silenced him with a single glance.

"There's nothing any of us can do now, Kevin," the Legend murmured. "Zoey was a good friend, and a damn fine Jerkop. I know she's gone, but I wish…I could've been there to say goodbye."

For a long while, no one spoke. It was a rather low-key eulogy for their fallen comrade, but a fitting one nonetheless. Zoey had been one of Al's most loyal friends and squadmates back when he had still commanded the Honey Badgers, always supporting his orders with her solid senses of control and risk management. As Steve's best friend, she had always been there to keep him in line when his chaotic impulses took over, yet she had been more than willing to brave hell itself to get the Honey Badgers out alive. And in her final sacrificial act, she had willingly died to save her friends from the same fate as her, giving up her life to kill Goody and cripple the feral pack.

"I'm going to kill him," Ben spoke up softly after a silent minute had passed. "Patterson. He and Goody…they're the reason that Zoey's dead. And I'm going to make him pay for what he did."

"We're all going to make them pay," said Kevin. "For Zoey. For everyone."

Al wiped away an angry tear and looked up again. His jaw was set, and his eyes blazed with vengeful hatred. "Then listen up. You're going to want to hear what I have to tell you."

The two men looked on, listening in silence as Al began.

"After Chandler destroyed Tripod and ordered the siege of Menchi-Nasu," the Legend explained, "he went after 4-cent_garbage. Howell, Cash, and Thaddeus put the facility into a full lockdown and attempted to sabotage his medallion. I don't know what happened, but somehow he managed to take out Beel with a Hyper Beam and destroyed Reldnahc's medallion. He's back to being the old Naitsirhc again, but Chandler teleported him away…we don't know where."

Kevin felt nothing but indifference toward the young Team Rocket commander. He still hadn't forgiven Naitsirhc for trying to kill him back in Viridian Forest and the Shopping Center. If Team Rocket had never launched the attack on the bus, Kevin would have never ended up in CWCville. He didn't know too much about how Giovanni's son had been possessed by the daemon Reldnahc, and at the moment, Naitsirhc's well-being was the least of his worries.

"Next thing we know," continued Al, "Sonichu, Blake, Wild, Punchy, and SON-CHU appear in Tennessee and set up this concert stage. A fucking _concert stage_. We thought it was going to be some sort of passive-aggressive protest song or some shit like that, but we…we were wrong." He took a deep breath and gritted his teeth in anger. "We were so fucking wrong. When they started playing, the vibrations from SON-CHU's speakers undermined the 4-cent_garbage building."

"Oh, Arceus," breathed Ben. "How many people were in-"

"Fifteen hundred," snarled the Legend. "Fifteen hundred 4-cent personnel with husbands, wives, kids…_lives_. The entire building went down in a matter of seconds. Jason Kendrick Howell, Jack Thaddeus, Clyde Cash, and Kathleen were all inside when it collapsed. We're still getting reports from the Clarksville response teams – they're estimating that more than nine hundred personnel were killed. Of course, Chandler released some bullshit statistics sheet about an hour ago trying to justify his actions and blaming Howell for building his skyscraper over Forsent Landfill."

A sharp pain lanced through Kevin's hand. Looking down, he noticed a drop of blood forming at the tip of his middle finger where the nail had cut into his palm. He'd been clenching his fists so hard in his fit of silent rage that he'd actually managed to inadvertently cut himself.

"After that, the administration all but lost control." Al unconsciously grabbed at his waist, as if seeking a phantom bottle of alcohol. "Of course, Christian and the cocksucking Hedgehog Boys didn't stick around long after 4-cent_garbage fell. Didn't stop them from dashing in for a few 'hero' photos and getting in the way of the paramedics, though. If anything, they made it worse."

"Sons of bitches," Kevin spat as he taped a Band-Aid over his bloody hand. "Those bastards."

"The admins sent in Silvana to delay that fat fuck while we tried to regroup," the Legend explained. "I heard she posed as Meg Griffin – only Chandler would've accepted a disguise that obvious. I don't know much else, but next thing we know, Chandler and Sonichu gathered those Sonichu Ball Crystals together and turned into Hobochu and Mary Sue Sonichu… Or whatever the fuck those furfags call themselves. Vivian and the Asperpedia team figured it out as a sort of ultimate form for the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. More trouble for us, anyway."

Al glanced at a medical chart on the wall. "Then it all went to hell. Everything. Even more so than it was before. Chandler and Sonichu had an agenda, and they weren't going to let anything get in the way of eliminating whatever competition they thought they had. And that meant…"

"Project Asperchu…" Kevin breathed, his eyes wide with shock. "Oh my fucking Arceus…"

"Yep. That traitorous fuck Schwartz told the city council exactly where Leary was keeping the cloned chus in Minnesota, and they were more than happy to tell Chandler where to find them. Something happened there that wiped out the compound's database, but all they told us is that Leary and all of the Asperchus survived, but they had to pretend to go through this brainwashing process to convince Chandler and Sonichu that they'd been 'cured.' They're all safe. The only thing we lost was the Metal Asperchu combat drone, but that thing was a piece of shit anyway. That, and four basic Rosechus. No big loss – they weren't even fully converted yet."

"Why didn't they just kill Leary?" asked Kevin.

"Chandler wanted Leary to meet his end at the hands of his own creations." Al rolled his eyes. "What he didn't realize is that…the Asperchus love Alec. They look up to him as a father figure, and the last thing they would ever do would be to attack him or hurt him. All that they did to him was just run at him and tackle him in a group hug, while Chandler and Sonichu left."

"And that was it? They just left them there?"

"Yep." The Legend shook his head. "Lucky for us, Silvana's teleporting them all back here, as well as any survivors of 4-cent_garbage. We need to regroup and figure out what we're going to do. This was pretty much the biggest clusterfuck we've ever experienced."

"What we need to do is get back to Slumberland," stated Kevin, and rose to his feet. "If Steve and the rest survived, they're going to want to hear about…"

_eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE_

"_It seems,"_ the silent voice snarled in his mind, _"that there has been a change of plans, pawn."_

"No…" gasped Kevin as a blazing light exploded through his head, burning angrily as it seared into his very consciousness and burst in a shower of kaleidoscopic violet hues. "Not…now…"

The floor rushed up to meet him, and in a flash, the pain was no more.

Darkness fell. But then a light…a searing and unnatural glow as industrial waste and sewage flowed freely across the once green expanse of the former United States. As Kevin watched, unable to move, CWCville gave way to CWCland, and eventually, to CWCworld. The entire planet, from all major land formations and islands were now occupied by the enemy…the chus.

Sonichus. Rosechus. Sonees and Roseys. Marching together in vast hordes the size of entire countries, they had spread across the earth, replicating to the point where almost all space had been claimed by them. The very landscape was now a writhing carpet of rainbow colored chu larvae, burrowing deep into the heart of the planet, sucking the very life force out of the earth, giggling and cuddling and cheering as they dug deeper and deeper, past thousands of skeletal remains which they happily sucked on in their immense, insatiable greed and hunger for more.

But as hideous a vision as it was, all of that paled in comparison to the eye of the storm.

CWCville. Now an even more hellish dystopia than it had once been. The city's infrastructure now loomed larger than ever, dominating the earth, expanded by scrap metal and even the flesh of countless humans who had perished in its creation. A wicked and vile place, its very streets seethed with propaganda and hatred. The words **NO HOMOS** had been sprayed over every wall, on every street and sign and poster and billboard. Sonichus and Rosechus propagated themselves in the street, every corner an orgy of unspeakable depravity and Bacchanalian lust. Roseys rained down from the stratosphere, their skirtachutes open, devouring entire flocks of birds in midflight while blood rained from their jagged maws onto the streets below. Hordes of Sonees and Roseys waddled to and fro, assaulting and biting and shocking the few emaciated, subjugated humans as the wretched slaves were pummeled by Sonichus and Rosechus into doing chores like mowing their lawns, carrying them across the city streets, and caring for their spoiled homebred children.

In the citadel at the center of CWCville, the Shopping Center and the Mayor's office, lay the heart of darkness, the source of all evil and pain. The office was exactly the same as it had once been, littered with junk food, toys, video games, and TVs. Many TVs…all of which displayed scenes of murder and debasement of dozens of humans as mocking laughter echoed through the room. Dead bodies of all shapes and sizes had been nailed to the ceiling and walls. Jerkops. Rebels. PVCC. A stuffed trophy of Mary Lee Walsh stood against a wall; her face twisted and locked in an eternal wail of agony while the mounted heads of the Miscreants lined the walls.

And on a throne of Lego bricks, human bones, and flayed skin sat the architect whose vile imagination had given rise to this hell. Mayor Christian Weston Chandler. He looked as if he had been dead for many, many years, yet his skin still wriggled with seeming life.

One by one, the true masters of CWCville emerged, bursting forth from their creator's mouth and skin like the hideous maggots they were. Cera Rosey, Christine Rosey, and Robbie Sonee, all covered in blood and filth from ears to stumpfeet, eternally young, eternally greedy, eternally hungry, simultaneously cheering in their wicked joy at the indescribable suffering of so many innocent men, women, children, and Pokémon to feed their selfish desires. They waddled about in their realm of dead skin and fatty tissue as a viscous torrent of blood and flesh flowed into the room through pipes, filling the empty shell of Chandler with a disgusting red and pink sludge. The babies frolicked and laughed in their gory playland, rolling in blood, waddling in circles, hugging and kissing each other, laughing in their piercing twee voices as they watched their chu kin eviscerating humans for their own amusement and heaping praises upon the larval overlords.

_"Death ta awl wife!"_ the demons screeched in unison. _"We awe da destwucshun of awl wiving tings! Existence itsewf wiwl be devowerd, fow we awe da Awlphachu an Omwegachu! YAY!"_

And from the remains of the Earth itself - a hollowed brown and grey sphere laid to waste by the chus and hordes of their ravenous larvae - the shrieking mass of fur exploded off the once fertile planet in unison, eager to begin the consumption and destruction of all life in the galaxy and beyond. In the end, all would kneel before the chaos known as the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

And in that moment, as reality itself folded and collapsed in on itself in a squirming, squealing storm of garish fur, Kevin realized the sickening truth about the chus. They were far more than just the insipid, parasitic vermin that had brought so much hatred and devastation to the people of CWCville, far more than an infestation, a living plague, or a seething, fuzzy, devouring horde. If left unchecked, if allowed to spread beyond the walls of their city, the chus would annihilate everything that was not them… simply because it was their nature to destroy, to devour, to kill.

The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon…were nothing less than death incarnate.

"_Now do you see, pawn?"_ the voice spoke again, its tone one of fury. _"This is what comes next. And only at the site of your allies' greatest defeat will the cogs of time turn present to future."_

Kevin awoke in a hospital cot drenched in sweat, panting and gasping for air as he thrashed and screamed and clawed at the sheets in absolute terror from the nightmare he had just witnessed. As a trio of startled medics dashed across the room toward him, the petrified Jerkop could only lie there, blinking furiously as the hellish apocalyptic world of chus faded away into the dark corners of his fevered mind. The voice was still in there, though, echoing around incessantly.

"He's back!" shouted Dr. Johnson, grabbing Kevin's arm and pressing a finger to his wrist. "Fucking hell, thank Arceus! Get Ledger! Someone get Ledger in here!"

"Way ahead of you, Bruce." Al appeared over the Jerkop, his face familiarly concealed behind a surgical mask. Raising a hand, he snapped his fingers. "Kevin? Kevin, you there? You with us?"

"Oh God…Al…" Kevin sat up slowly, shaking with fright. "Al, how long was I out?"

"Just over ten minutes," Johnson replied before the Legend could answer. "You went into severe convulsions at first, then a total shutdown of all motor functions. We tested your brain patterns while you were out…good God, I've never even _seen_ such a high level of neural chaos before."

"Basically, you suffered what we think was a psychic attack - an intense psychic attack," Al continued, and handed Kevin something that resembled an earthquake detection graph. "Except for the fact that it doesn't add up. At least, not after _this_." He pointed to a section of the chart that had been circled in red permanent marker. "You went from the normal brain patterns of a psychic attack victim to…I don't even know _what_ this is. How are you feeling now?"

"I…" Kevin didn't even get a chance to finish before an immense wave of nausea set in. Without warning, he leapt up, pushed Al aside, and vomited, emptying his stomach into the nearest trash can. When he was finished, Johnson offered him a few paper towels, which he gladly accepted.

"Don't worry, that's normal," the doctor reassured him kindly. "Now Kevin…Kevin, listen to me. Ledger and I are going to ask you a few questions. Just take a deep breath and relax."

Kevin obeyed, using the few seconds of freedom he had to observe the room he was currently in. It was not a particularly large place, but held about five rows of cots, as well as tables full of surgical equipment and various monitors. Several of the cots held injured and sleeping Jerkops who were being attended by the medical staff. And resting in the cot directly beside him was…

"Marty!" he gasped, hurrying to the little boy's side concernedly. Marty's baseball cap had been removed, and his stubby red horns now jutted through his silky blond hair for all to see. Hurriedly, he looked back to Johnson, then Al. "Al, does anyone know about-"

"Nee!"

"THE FUCK?" Kevin yelled as a chubby Sonee covered in a sickly coat of patchy grey-green fur appeared from beneath the sheets of Marty's cot and wriggled its way up the boy's back, paying no attention to the astounded Jerkop staring at it in disbelief. Once it had finally reached Marty's shoulders, it promptly sat down and turned its malformed body to face Kevin, revealing a rather disturbing patchwork of sewn-together body parts and bionic machinery. Two large metal screws had been inserted at the base of both of the Sonee's long ears, and one of its reptilian eyes had been removed and replaced with a button, the same kind as the ones on Al's old trench coat.

"Nee!" it squeaked again, and raised an armstub to wave at Kevin, prompting a tiny spark from both of its earscrews. Upon further inspection, the Jerkop noticed several sharp claws protruding from the formerly useless and still rather pathetically-shaped limbs.

"What in the holy mother of fucking hell _is_ that thing?" Kevin asked, turning to Al.

The Legend shrugged. "Just a side project of mine. I call him Franken-Sonee. Part of a LIESA endoskeleton, surrounded by partially-reanimated Sonee and Rosey body tissue. He mostly just waddles around and hisses at whatever he doesn't try to eat. Seems to have taken a shine to little Marty, though. Which reminds me, Bruce, what was your diagnosis for the…_protrusions_?"

"Simple benign growths," stated the doctor, sharing a knowing glance with the former Manajerk until the assistant medics had moved out of earshot to tend to another patient. "Don't be alarmed. Nothing's going to happen to him. We moved him here after he lost consciousness…just a few seconds after you did, as a matter of fact. You don't need to worry about the boy's identity." He sighed. "Not every PVCC scientist is a traitor, you know."

"He'll pay," Al growled. "Schwartz is gonna burn with the rest of 'em on Judgment Day."

"Please," Kevin begged hoarsely, startling the two men. "Al…what the hell happened to me?"

The Legend glanced at a nearby monitor. "All right, no more bullshit. You weren't out for ten minutes, Kevin. You were in that state of paralysis for a full three hours. Bruce, tell him what you…"

"You started…talking," Johnson explained, his voice trembling. "But this wasn't just a nightmare or some kind of hallucination. You ever see _The Exorcist_, those scenes where the demon talks to the priests by using the little girl's voice?"

A chilling void emerged in the pit of Kevin's stomach, as if a miniature black hole had decided to manifest itself inside of his body. For a moment, he thought he was going to pass out again, but somehow, he managed to subdue it long enough to press the doctor for more answers.

"What…did I say?" he asked cautiously, bracing himself for the answer.

"I think you'd better hear it yourself," Al replied, and slowly withdrew a small digital recorder from the pocket of his lab coat. Turning up the volume, he set it on the cot and pressed **PLAY**.

"_All…final tests of the vaccine…were of…full success as well…"_ Kevin's voice, little more than a strangled whisper, hissed from the device's speakers. _"After having returned the crates of the vaccine to our own…time, I requested aid of the water…treatment and…medical facilities. The one thousand crates…were transported in fifty…Mack trucks…the vaccine would later be tested over the next six months, then dispensed into the world's drinking waters. And so…on February 24, 2009…every last person…will be cured and protected of...the oritentation…of hell, and that day will be declared…"_

"What the fuck…" breathed the Jerkop, unable to believe the words that had seemingly flowed from his own mouth during his fever dream of a world dominated by chus. "What…"

"_And, spoiler alert,"_ growled the voice from the recorder in a far more unsettling tone. _"After the death of Graduon's scepter, Silvana Rosechu will become all woman; she and I will become a True Love Couple as well."_

The recording hissed with static and ended, leaving the three men in a state of utter shock.

"Oh…my…God," Kevin spoke at last, burying his head in his hands.

"Magi-Chan Sonichu," answered Johnson with a grim frown. "What you just heard was the start of what we call a psychic echo – or, in this case, I call it the Psych ex Machina. Sorry for such an uninspired title, but as you know, the Chaotic Combo seems to thrive on the appearance of _deus ex machina_ to solve their problems, and it seems that their strength has finally turned against them to expose a weakness."

"What are you talking about?" asked Kevin confusedly. "What weakness?"

"The final event in the Mayor's return to CWCville," the doctor stated. "You heard what you said, Kevin. Somehow, acting on Chandler's orders, Magi-Chan Sonichu was able to travel beyond the Time Void and into what I'm going to assume was an alternate future. I'm gonna be honest, Kevin, I'm just throwing science at the wall here to see what'll stick."

"No, it's all right, Bruce," Al muttered. "We're not exactly strangers to time travel."

"But in any case," continued Johnson, "the fact of the matter is that Magi-Chan brought some sort of vaccine back…a chemical compound that can apparently suppress certain brain patterns that trigger in the presence of…_homosexual_ thoughts. We know that Chandler engineered a similar compound back in 2006, and injected it into his chus. It causes severe allergic reactions to the very _idea_ of same-sex contact or any form of homosexual activity, even unintentional actions. But here's the thing…Leary's team tested a sample of this compound on Simonchu and the Asperchus, then had them all observe video clips of straight, gay, and lesbian porn, watch two bi male and two bi female volunteers alternately kissing each other, and had them handle male and female sex toys to measure their reactions. All the tests came up negative."

The PVCC scientist paused, letting the horrible truth sink in. "Do you see what we're trying to say, Kevin? Chandler didn't _turn_ the chus into violent crusaders against homosexuality. That compound only works on the chus who share a level of complete and utter insecurity with that of their creator. They _wanted_ to be just like their Father. They _wanted_ total mental convergence."

"And…he found a way to make this for PEOPLE?" Kevin nearly screamed, his eyes bulging in terror at the consequences of such a vaccine being released upon the earth.

Al nodded. "A global purge of any form of sexuality that isn't exclusively male-female. If what you said is true, we could very well be looking at a cataclysm unlike anything CWCville…or the entire civilized world, for that matter…has ever experienced. Bruce and I stumbled onto this lead by accident, believe it or not. We were trying to isolate an unknown substance from the chemical makeup of CWC Orange Soda, of all things."

Kevin shuddered violently, recalling his rather embarrassing encounter with a Chandler's Third Date. If he ever ran into that mustached Sea Lion operative again, there would be hell to pay.

"It wasn't anything too nasty," continued the Legend. "Just another compound to boost the…uh, the _arousal_ levels of Sonichus and Rosechus. We cross-checked it with some DNA from the Asperchus, and found a few similarities to the 2006 chu-only homophobia vaccine. And until tonight, we didn't have any clue of what Chandler was doing…until Silvana Rosechu showed up with a hypodermic needle full of his blood. Say what you will about the bitch, but her plan worked. Without that sample, we would never have found…"

"…the link to the human vaccine…" Kevin finished, horrified by the nauseating revelation. "Chandler engineered it from his own blood."

"Not exactly." Al blinked. "Not in this CWCville, anyway. It's complicated."

"I'll buy it," groaned the Jerkop, and clutched his aching head. "How are they going to-"

"We're still pulling ourselves together after Menchi-Nasu and 4-cent_garbage went down," said Johnson. "Unless we were somehow able to find out where the vaccine was being manufactured, there's not much the PVCC _can_ do. Thank Arceus we didn't lose more operatives in the siege."

"Fuck!" Kevin whirled toward Al. "What happened to the rest of the squad?"

"They're all right," replied the Legend hastily. "All alive. We'll get you back there soon enough, trust me. But for now…Kevin…" Placing a hand on the young operative's shoulder, he fixed Kevin with a piercing, powerful stare, as if trying to probe the Jerkop's mind itself. "I need you to tell me if you saw anything else. Anything that we might be able to use. _We_ _need_ _to_ _know_."

"I had…a dream." Kevin chewed his lip fretfully. "A world where chus ruled over humans."

"Good, good," Al coaxed, releasing the iron grip on his shoulder. "Keep going. Keep going."

"Everything was gone," continued the Jerkop. "They destroyed and ate everything. We were all slaves…they made us work for them while they kept eating and fucking and breeding and…God, it was _insane_." He swallowed. "And Chandler was dead, but the Sonichu brats…_they took over his body_. I don't remember much else, just that they're gonna keep spreading."

Al and Johnson exhaled simultaneously, their faces twisted with disappointment.

"Thanks, Kevin," the Legend sighed. "It just sounds like you had a worst-case scenario nightmare. But don't worry, it can't happen." He glanced at Johnson. "It can't, right?"

"According to Dunn's Theory of _Navitaricius_ Reproduction," commented the doctor, "the possibility of the species reaching a great enough population to cause a global catastrophe is rather unlikely…" He paused and turned back to Kevin. "But I tell you, it could happen. It could happen. Well, that's all the interrogation we need to do for now, Kevin. Whatever that psychic announcement from Ultra Sonichu did to you, it must have opened up certain receptors that let you receive the echo. Funny thing is, no one else besides Commander Iseli reported an experience like what you just described. But it doesn't matter now. I suggest you get some-"

"WAIT!" shouted Kevin. "WAIT! It wasn't the announcement! There was another one!"

Johnson drew back in surprise, as did Al. "Another? What do you mean, _another one?_"

"You mean, no one else heard a voice talking about pawns and a change of plans?" asked Kevin, panting as his heart thundered with excitement. "No one else heard that?"

"What in Arceus's name are you talking about?" asked the PVCC scientist, dumbfounded.

"Someone said something to me at the end of the dream…and that same voice spoke to me back in the abandoned zone. It was just like the un-brainwashing announcement…but it only affected me for some reason. And you said…" He glanced at Marty. "You said we just passed out at the same time, three hours ago?"

Al nodded. "That's right."

Gritting his teeth in anger, Kevin stared straight into Al's eyes. "Al…where the fuck is Walsh?"

Johnson handed over his clipboard, the foremost page of which consisted of a crude transcript of what had to be a citywide announcement by Chandler himself, timestamped from 5:15 p.m.

_As of One Hour ago on August 9, 2008, in my city of CWCville, Virginia, Slaweel the Witch has at last been Honestly defeated by myself, Christian Weston Chandler, the Mayor of CWCville, and has been given a Fair-Judged Sentence of no less than Ten Years in CWCville Penitentiary, or 10000 hours of Community Service for the Hateful and Heart-Shattering Crimes she and her Troll Jerkops have committed against me. Furthermost, the fiendish Count Graduon has also been defeated once and for all after I courageously shattered his Crystal Staff Orb dead. Unlike the wicked and hateful Slaweel, though, I showed her mercy in her Defeating Hour, and now she must do HARD WORK in service of the City of CWCville, Virginia, to build up the shattered Heart Levels of all the Love-Starved CWCitizens who have now been released of the brainwashing that "Vigrinia is for Virgins"! Peace. -CWC._

Kevin stared at the sheet of paper in silence, quaking with fury as he scanned the hateful words again and again in search of some flaw, something to expose the announcement as a lie. If Walsh had indeed been captured and Howell, Clyde Cash, and Jack Thaddeus had died in the collapse of 4-cent_garbage, then the PVCC had just been stripped of its two most prominent leaders and two of the most respected commanders in the entire resistance. The role of supreme commander would have passed to Vivian Gee, but Kevin knew that she would never be able to garner the level of adoration and support that Walsh had built up over the course of her decade-long rebellion. Without Walsh, the Miscreants would be lucky to even keep their own administration from tearing itself apart in the power struggle that was certain to result from such a catastrophe.

"We've got to get her back," he murmured, clenching his fingers around the paper and crumpling it into a ball. "Al, we need to put something together…a strike team or more Devil Trolls. We all got out of CWCville Penn – we can get back inside and set her free!"

"We're looking at a total collapse of our command infrastructure," retorted Al in frustration. "It'll be a miracle if Leary even manages to pull off his little operation." He slammed his fist into a cart full of medical supplies, immediately startling Franken-Sonee and causing the fuzzy little abomination to tumble off of Marty with a surprised hiss. "Kevin, we're out of time! Those trucks are on their way out of the city now, but we don't know where from! They're not leaving from the Shopping Center – BILLY MAYS just confirmed it a few minutes ago."

"Can't the Miscreants track them with the UAV?"

"We lost control of that thing when Menchi-Nasu went dark!" Al raised his hand and pressed a finger against the Jerkop's forehead. "There's got to be something else that Magi-Chan told you! We've got everything but the location! If it's not the Shopping Center, then where the fuck is it?"

"How should I know?" yelled Kevin. "What about Iseli? You said he had similar symptoms! What happened to him? Didn't he hear anything?"

"All they told us was that Iseli suffered a heavy migraine and erratic brain patterns around the same time that you passed out," said Johnson. "No nightmares or psychic echoes. We're still not sure what exactly happened to him, but it might have had something to do with a past exposure to intense psychic energy. But that doesn't matter now. What matters is what's on your mind."

"Then what the fuck do you need me to _do?_" shouted the Jerkop in frustration.

"We need to know where the vaccine's being stored," the Legend answered, his voice trembling with intense concentration. "Right now, nothing else matters. If they get those trucks out of the city, we lose this whole fucking war here and now. _Think_, Kevin! What else did he say to you?"

Kevin closed his eyes and took a deep breath, allowing himself to drift back into the memory of his nightmare's epilogue. The silent words pulsed through his head, filling the Jerkop with their ominous message once more. Somehow, he knew they had come from another source, a different source. Someone or something else had been psychically contacting him in the abandoned zone.

"It wasn't Magi-Chan," he spoke at last. "He's smarter than the rest…he wouldn't give away his own plan. Whoever contacted me…they were speaking directly to me. Just before the nightmare ended…" He paused, focusing on piecing the message back together. "Only at the site of your allies' greatest defeat will the…the cogs of time…turn present to future."

"Thank you." Al let out a sigh of relief and embraced the startled Jerkop. "_Thank you_, Kevin."

"Remnant Five, Remnant Five, come back," Johnson spoke quickly into a portable radio, wiping beads of sweat from his brow. "Come back, Remnant Five. We found it! It's Hogwash! Repeat, the target is Hogwash! Over!"

"_This is Remnant Five!"_ Bryan Bash replied excitedly through the receiver. _"Solid copy on Hogwash, Johnson! Everyone, stand by! Vivian! VIVIAN, IT'S HOGWASH!"_

"Wait, what?" Kevin leapt to his feet as the doctor turned and dashed for the exit, leaving Al alone with the Jerkop, Marty, and Franken-Sonee. "Al, what the fuck's going on? How do they know that Hogwash was the place?"

"We narrowed it down from a few possibilities," replied the Legend. "CWCville Penn, Boleyn Plaza, the ruins of Piedmont College…but Hogwash…" He clenched his fist triumphantly. "It has to be the place. If the administrators are going to go all in on this little hunch, we should be hearing the alarms going off in just a few-"

Al's hurried explanation was quickly cut off as the menacing howl of an air-raid siren blasted through the Library's PA system. The sound could only mean one thing: a full-scale emergency alert for all major PVCC bases and outposts located throughout CWCville. Without warning, Vivian Gee's voice issued forth from the intercom speakers, conveyed across the linked citywide address system as Al, Kevin, and the rest of the medical staff in the room listened intently.

"_To any and all PVCC personnel in range of this broadcast,"_ the administrator began, speaking with what sounded like a fresh burst of resolve after hours upon hours of desperation. _"This is Vivian Gee, acting supreme commander of the Private Villa of Corrupted Citizens resistance initiative. As of exactly five minutes ago, we have entered emergency status level Five, I repeat, emergency status level Five. If you have been cleared for combat operations, report immediately to your squad commanders for instructions. Non-combat personnel, report to your supervisors and prepare to enter White Alert. This is a full mobilization, I repeat, a full mobilization."_

"Holy…_fuck_," whispered Kevin. Al nodded and reached for what looked like a large black briefcase resting against the side of Marty's cot as the announcement continued on above them.

"_This message…was given to me by my predecessor, Commander Mary Lee Walsh, so that I might share it with you in the event of her death or capture,"_ snarled Gee, her soft voice shaking with suppressed fury. _"My associates. My comrades. My Jerkops. My friends. I won't hold back the truth of what happened today. We lost 4-cent_garbage, and with it, Jason Kendrick Howell, Clyde Cash, Jack Thaddeus, Kathleen, and over nine hundred innocents to an unspeakable act of terror the likes of which we have never encountered before. Menchi-Nasu has been overrun by the EHPF, and Commander Walsh is now a prisoner of the enemy. We've been demoralized. We've been crippled. We've been shattered and swayed and bent and broken."_

"_But we're STILL HERE!"_ the Miscreant shouted without warning, startling Kevin. _"We're still here, and we're still alive! And as we march forth to end this marathon of destruction and turn the tide against our foes, we fight for the dead of Clarksville! For the courageous operatives who fell in defense of Menchi-Nasu! For all who have given their lives in the war to free this forsaken city, and for those who have been crushed in defiance of their soulless rulers! For them, and for yourselves, defenders of CWCville, stand with me, and we will WIPE OUT THIS PLAGUE!"_

There came a few moments of silence, followed by a repeated broadcast of the first part of Gee's announcement – the alert. Beyond the door of the hospital wing, hundreds of footsteps echoed through the halls of the Library HQ as nearly a dozen Jerkop squads rushed to gather weapons and equipment together. Announcements began crackling back and forth over the intercom, alerts for Library personnel and administrators. The base was on full alert, and Kevin knew that across CWCville, the Jerkops of Wilderness, ChinaTown, and Slumberland were preparing for battle as well. The PVCC's all-or-nothing gambit was a risky one, no doubt, but if it meant saving the unsuspecting world from Chandler's malevolent vaccine, it was a risk worth taking.

"Looks like we're gonna have to save all the teary-eyed reunion stuff for later," growled Al as he opened the briefcase. Shrugging off the lab coat, he unfolded a large bundle of brown clothing and smiled nostalgically. "I would call this a comeback, but then again, I never actually retired."

"Well, that's perfect," a familiar voice chuckled from behind the Legend as a small group of footsteps approached rapidly. "Glad to have you on board, you magnificent bastard."

Al and Kevin turned around simultaneously, grinning with relief and sheer joy as Steve Morrison and Kuri Tatsuno – both armed to the teeth and looking as if they had walked through the fires of hell itself – approached from the open doorway, trailed by Nate, Allie, Serge, Matt, and Jexis. The Honey Badgers, at long last, had reassembled.

"How you been, Steve?" Al laughed as he and the blond Jerkop embraced. "Good God, you look like shit. What the hell have you been putting my baby through?"

"She's…uh…kind of banged up in the back end," the Manajerk replied sheepishly. "Nothing you won't be able to fix, though, right?"

"You'd better hope so," growled the Legend, and pulled on his trench coat. Reaching into the briefcase, he withdrew his old welder's mask and pulled it on. "Fucking hell, it's been too long."

"Damn right, Al." Steve shouldered his XM8 and turned to Kevin. "We'll debrief once this all blows over. Nick and Zo should be fine here while we're out in Hogwash." He smiled. "I'm just glad to see you alive, Kevin. You had us all worried for a bit. Some…more than others."

"Arceus! Get over here!" the Jerkop chuckled as Allie pushed through Matt and Jexis and flung her arms around him. Paying no regard to the reactions of his squadmates, Kevin drew her in for a long kiss, and the moment their lips touched burned away every last shred of doubt and fear in his heart, along with the surge of worry he'd felt at hearing Zoey's name mentioned so casually by Steve. There was nothing that needed to be said by either of them. The reunion itself, and the reassurance that his missing squadmates had all escaped with their lives, were more than enough.

"Everyone, listen!" snapped Steve as he and Al turned to face the rest of the Honey Badgers. "We got our assignment from Joe just two minutes ago - we'll be operating with the Red Devils for a direct assault through Filter Station Six. Breach and clear, in before they know what's going on, then kill, destroy, or confiscate every loyalist thing we find." His smile faded, and for a moment, Kevin wondered if the Manajerk could sense the bitter truth about his dead lieutenant. "This is nothing short of bloody, bloody vengeance. Vengeance for all they took from us today. So let's go show them what happens when you go all in against the Honey Badgers."

_And vengeance for Zoey,_ Kevin thought silently, smiling bitterly as he reached for the AK-47 propped up against his cot. What lay in store for the squad at the ruins of Hogwash was unknown to any of them, but as long as mercenaries and chus still infested the old PVCC base, that vengeance would most assuredly be made manifest with fire, steel, bullets, and blood.

He could not have wished for a more perfect opportunity.

* * *

**East CWCville, Lower East district, Wilderness, administrator meeting room, 7:25 p.m.**

"Kacey, Liquid, Robert, Bryan…and me," Vivian Gee commented to Bryan Bash, Ivo Robotnik, Max Milvana, and Jimmy Hill as she massaged her temples and sank into the administrator's chair that had once been reserved for Mary Lee Walsh herself. "Two field commanders, an agent, the head of communications, and one newspaper editor turned glorified hacker. The Remnant Five of Menchi-Nasu." She let out a nervous chuckle filled with little more than pure self-pity. "Arceus help me. I had no idea. I mean, I _never_ thought it would end up this way."

"It's not over yet, my dear girl," Hill reminded the new PVCC commander. "And furthermore, Miss Gee, your efforts thus far have been most admirable. Bloody brilliant, if you ask me."

"Save the compliments for when we don't have a global sexuality crisis on our hands, Jimmy," Gee said. She paused for a moment. "Oh God, I actually said 'global sexuality crisis', didn't I?"

"I still don't know why we're bothering with all the 'oh my God, we're all gonna turn straight' bullshit," complained Max, spinning himself around in his chair out of boredom. "Eggman, come on, you're the science guy. This whole 'gay vaccine' thing…it's not _real_, right? Right?"

"Of course not! And don't call me by that imbecilic nickname, you little brrrrrrrrrat!" thundered Robotnik, and pointed at Max. "Get a load of this! I may have dedicated my immense genius to the art of rrrrrrrrobotic technologies rather than some useless _medical_ pursuit, but even _I_ could tell you that any vaccine must be derrrrrrrived from the blood of an individual _with_ the condition! That bigoted rrrrrretard and his worthless 'cure' are no more a danger to the human rrrrrrace than that meddling hedgehog is to my latest and most diabolical invention! I call it the-"

"Yes, yes, Ivo, can we _please_ stop talking about how you're gonna destroy Sonic next?" Vivian sighed in exasperation and rolled her eyes. "We need to focus on Hogwash. Chandler's starting his speech in just a few minutes, and Alec's operation should keep the Combo distracted long enough for our ground teams to do some serious damage. Any word on where Giovanni is?"

"Slumberland's been mobilized, but nothing from Giovanni yet," reported Bash, and reluctantly turned to Max. "Look…_Julie_…I don't like having to call you out like this, but if there's anything you can tell us about what happened to Reldnahc, now's the time to speak your piece."

The little boy's body stiffened, and his eyes quickly flashed from brown to a blazing indigo blue. His lips curled into a menacing smile, and when he spoke, it was not his own voice, but a high, cold, unquestionably inhuman tone that sent a deep chill through the surrounding Miscreants.

"_The fool is no more,"_ Max spoke, guided by the Warp entity that had assumed the place of his dead sister in his mind back in 1999, on the same day that the legendary three-year time freeze had begun in CWCville. _"Trapped in a feeble medallion of earth and blood – a pathetic choice. It is only fitting that the fat one's blood be his doom. Perhaps we shall meet again one day, when I leave this wretched world and return to my place of honor at Lord Tzeentch's side."_

"Sure." Vivian drummed her fingers on the tabletop. "Anyway, can you track down Naitsirhc?"

"_A simple matter in my realm,"_ replied the daemon, _"but an impossible task here. There is little Warp presence to trace…and with that pathetic Bloodletter and Reldnahc dead, even less now."_

"Okay. Give us Max back, unless there's anything else."

With another shudder, Max's eyes turned brown again, and the stiffness faded from his body. Looking around, he rubbed his forehead and grimaced. "Fuck, that hurt. What'd she say?"

"Nothing worth our time, my lad," Jimmy Hill replied disinterestedly, and turned back to Gee. "I suppose we'll have to cross that sodding bridge when we come to it. As of now, though, we have several key operations to manage, and time is short." He pointed to the doorway that led to the command and control center of Wilderness. "They need you, Vivian. Now more than ever."

The commander nodded and rose from her chair. "Right. We've got a lot to do and not much time left to do it, so I want everyone constantly connected by radio in case anything else hap-"

Without warning, the door to the meeting room swung open, startling the gathered Miscreants. Two Jerkops and a female Manajerk with long brown hair and a Robotnik Technologies artificial eye set into the right side of her face dutifully stepped inside, escorting a man who looked to be in his early to mid-50s. The civilian's clothes had been torn and several patches of his grey hair were freshly singed, as if he had just escaped from a burning building. His eyes, however, held a grim determination that seemed to emanate from his entire person, like an invisible aura.

"Commander Gee!" the Manajerk reported smartly, and saluted. "I apologize for the interruption, ma'am, but this man just arrived at the side entrance with two other civvies…knew the password and everything, too. He says he just survived an assassination attempt…by Chandler himself."

"Very good, Thodt," Vivian replied, and strode toward the newcomer, shaking her head in pity. "Inevitable. We knew it was only a matter of time before the Mayor would try and remove you. The question is, why risk it for so long? Why jeopardize your own family? Why, Snyder?"

"Leverage," growled Michael Snyder, and wiped a smear of blood from his lower lip. "Leverage and history. The Lumberjacks take care of their own. But what happened today was nothing short of an act of war." He nodded gratefully as Bryan Bash pushed a chair over to him, then collapsed into it. "After he captured Walsh, he went for the GAMe PLACe. Probably knew that his Collosal state couldn't last much longer, so he wanted to straighten out one final loose end."

"Arceus," breathed the commander. "What happened? How did you escape?"

Snyder blinked. "Wait. I thought your agents arranged the power outage. There's no other way-"

"Power outage?" Gee stared blankly at the former GAMe PLACe owner. "What do you mean?"

"What I mean is that all the lights shut down across the Shopping Center," explained Snyder. "It couldn't have been a coincidence. Someone knew that I was under attack. Whatever the case, I got out of there alive - with just a few scrapes and my family - before Chandler realized I wasn't there anymore. Next thing I know, I've got friends calling me, asking if I'm all right and letting me know that the fucking Mayor of fucking CWCville just blew up my entire fucking store."

"We didn't have anything to do with any power outages in the Shopping Center," Bryan Bash replied confusedly. "Vivian, did Mary ever say anything to you about a sabotage operation?"

"No…" Gee hurriedly pulled out her laptop and scrolled through a few monitoring programs she had set up to gather information from various loyalist facilities and outposts. "Nothing on the…" Her eyes narrowed as a new screen popped up. "Wait. Bryan, what the fuck _is_ this? It says…it says that one of our saboteur units somehow got access to…look at all this shit! Shopping Center security measures, door locks, cameras, Chandler's PS3 and personal computer, the entire broadcast system…" She gasped in shock. "Arceus! ARCEUS! The CWCipedia archives!"

"WHAT?" The stunned Miscreants gathered around their young commander, staring excitedly as she tapped a few keys and shifted the contents of her laptop to the meeting room's flat projector screen on the wall. Immense quantities of data were being transferred wirelessly from the Shopping Center to the PVCC servers – Chandler's personal account numbers, files on the Chaotic Combo and the chu cloning programs, and even the security details for 14 Brunchville Lane itself. Suddenly, Operation Hedgeclipper was looking like a legitimate possibility again.

"Jesus fucking Christ," breathed Bryan Bash. "Did one of our hacker teams finally get through?"

"No," answered the commander as her eyes and face lit up in utter delight. "It's a LIESA unit."

* * *

**Northeast CWCville, Factory District, outside the ruins of Hogwash, 7:32 p.m.**

"…_individual who was, who was brainwashed by her have been released of her spell, including tha ex-Manajerks. I am also going to make it legal for all homosexuals to do as dey please within the city, but tha h-, uh, gay marriage will continue to be, ah, illegal. I am appointin' Crystal to-"_

"YEAH!" shouted one of the three EHPF guards as he and his comrades sat outside the collapsed tunnel that led to Filter Station Six of the former water treatment plant and PVCC base known as Hogwash, watching Christian Weston Chandler's speech from the CWCville Shopping Center on a portable TV set. "Father will not let those dirty homos ruin our city with their impure ways!"

"Our Creator is wise and merciful," commented the second Sonichu. "He will make sure all the homos are cured of the orientation of hell with his ingenious vaccine!" He placed his gloved hands on his hips and smiled smugly. "It was made from his own untainted blood, you know!"

The other two Electric Hedgehog Pokémon nodded vigorously, even though they had both been pretty much repeating this same conversation for the last two hours, never ceasing to grow tired of bashing their hated enemy. It was an immense honor for such heroic individuals as themselves to have been selected to guard the site of the Mayor's next victory, and all three of them simply couldn't wait for the day when the vaccine would finally be released to the world's water supply.

"When all the homos have been cured, at last Father will be free of all the stress they have caused," stated the first Sonichu. "Then his Love Quest can finally proceed and he will be able to find a boyfriend-free girl to make into his Sweetheart from the Ground-Up!" The declaration was met by wistful sighs from his comrades, both of whom were just as excited about their creator finding a possible mate as they were about doing hanky-panky with their Rosechu girlfriends.

"And with that heart-shattering witch Mary Lee Walsh out of the way," added the third EHPF officer, "nothing will stop Christian's Heart Level from reaching 100%...and beyond!"

"Excuse me! Hello?"

At the sound of this new and unfamiliar voice, the trio of Sonichus leapt up and whirled around dramatically, snapping into combat stances and getting ready to zap any intruders to the extreme.

"Who goes there!" the second one yelled. "Y'all better not be homos! Father is merciful, but you are entering a super top secret place, and we will zap you if you are one of the dang homos!"

A pair of humans - a young woman with blond hair and glasses and a calm-looking brown-haired man wearing a large pipe wrench across his back – stepped out from behind a large pile of rubble and approached the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon cautiously. Both of them were heavily armed: the first with an MP5 submachine gun and the second with an AA-12 automatic shotgun.

"Jerkops!" the first Sonichu yelled, and pointed dramatically to the pair of humans. "We should have known y'all would try something as foolish as this!" He grinned self-assuredly. "Well, y'all picked a bad time to mess with the unstoppable EHPF! Prepare for a zappin' battle, JERKS!"

"No! Wait!" The blond girl held out a hand as the officers charged. "We're not Jerkops!"

Unbelievably, the three Sonichus skidded to a halt and stopped, waiting to hear the explanation.

"…_reason, he chose ta withdraw dat permission. Simonla was not my…mine ta begin with,"_ continued Chandler's voice on the TV, _"as she was originally based off of Simonchu. I had edited her CWCipedia bio page ta state dat she was not stolen from…not based off of Simonchu. Having created Simonla, I had gone against Evan's wishes, an' I…uh, I apologize for dat."_

"The un-brainwashing from Ultra Sonichu freed our minds from Slaweel's control!" shouted the man with the wrench and AA-12. "All this time, we had been mindless slaves, forced to shatter countless hearts and ruin True Love Couples against our better judgment!" He smiled. "But now we have been set free of the witch's control, and we want to help the Mayor in his Love Quest!"

Simultaneously, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon grinned. Of course! Ultra Sonichu's psychic broadcast had freed all of the Jerkops in CWCville from their mental imprisonment, and now that Walsh and Graduon were unable to control their servants anymore, it only made sense that the former trolls would obviously want to help undo all of the stress they had caused to the Mayor!

"Ha ha!" laughed the third Sonichu, beaming with pride as he crossed his arms across his fuzzy chest. "Well, as Joseph said in the Bible, we must all learn to forgive those who slander against-"

"Yeah, yeah," sighed Matt, and fired a two-round burst into the chu's smug face, splattering its spiky head into a sticky mixture of blood, bone, and brain. Before the other two officers could even leap back in shock, Jexis raised her MP5 and unloaded an entire magazine into their torsos and abdomens, effectively perforating the Sonichus with at least a dozen bullet holes each. Choking and spluttering on lungfuls of their own blood, the yellow creatures dropped to their knees and collapsed forward one by one. The two Honey Badgers didn't even bother to finish the job, but simply watched and laughed as the dying chus bled out on the concrete.

"That _never_ gets old," giggled Jexis, and kissed her boyfriend on the cheek. "Good shooting!"

"Thanks, baby. You too." Matt stepped over to one of the dead Electric Hedgehog Pokémon and prodded it with his foot, then bent down, grabbed its hand, and placed it on the adjacent Sonichu's crotch. "God, they're just too stupid to live. Hope the rest of the mission's that easy."

"It won't be," sighed the young medic as the Battle Bus rumbled out of an alley across the street and parked on the road beside the water treatment plant's collapsed western tunnel. "These kinds of assignments _never_ are."

"Well, this one won't be any easier with _that_ attitude," replied the mechanic, and grinned as he drew a couple of joints and a lighter from his pocket. "I think I know just what you need, Doc."

Jexis shook her head. "Later. We're gonna need to keep our heads clear for this. And besides, there's gonna be Roseys coming out of the goddamn walls once we get inside. I don't want you-"

Matt's eyes narrowed. "Drop it. For fuck's sake, that got old, like, half a year ago."

"And yet, we will always remember that fateful day," Al remarked snidely as he, Kevin, and Steve escorted the rest of the Honey Badgers over to their two squadmates. "Good kills, you two. Don't get too used to that tactic – the True Blue won't be fooled as easily."

"Right." Matt quickly slid the magazine out of his AA-12 and inserted two fresh shells, just to be safe. "So what's the plan now, just walk up to the tunnel and ask them to clear it out for us?"

Steve nodded to Kuri, who obediently unclipped one of the two Poké Balls from her belt and tossed it into the air with a cry of "Go! Luxo!" In a flash of white light, the Lunatone had popped into existence, its crescent-shaped stone body suspended above the ground by psychic energy.

"We're going to have to blast our way in," explained the Legend as Kuri began directing Luxo to pulverize layer upon layer of debris and stone, effectively clearing away the blocked passage to Hogwash. "The main attack's gonna start in just a few minutes, and when that happens, I want everyone on top of their game. We're heading into enemy territory here."

"Good thing we brought them along," The Manajerk raised a hand to the radio on his shoulder strap and clicked it on. "Joe, you there? We're at the west tunnel and working our way in, over."

"_Acknowledged,"_ replied Joseph Herring. _"Kacey and Liquid just sent out the attack order a few seconds ago. Meet up with Lynn's squad inside Station Six – we'll talk you through the rest. Watch your backs in there, guys. No one knows what they've been doing in there since 2006."_

"So basically, Joe, what you're saying is 'make shit up as you go'." Steve laughed. "Deal. Out."

"_Thank y'all for havin', uh, for your patience, an' respect, an' loyalty. I am Christian Weston Chandler, tha Mayor of CWCville, Virginia. Have a good an' safe…"_

"For God's sake, someone shut that fucking thing off," snapped Al. Kevin raised his AK-47 and put a bullet through the screen of the portable TV, silencing Chandler's last words just seconds before the sound of a colossal explosion would have blasted out of the device's speakers. The Jerkops never heard the blast that killed Simonla Rosechu, nor did they know anything about what Alec Benson Leary and his colleagues had been up to over in the Shopping Center.

But what they _did_ know was that the Second Battle of Hogwash was nigh, and that to save the human race from falling into utter chaos, Chandler's abhorrent vaccine needed to be destroyed.

* * *

**West CWCville, subdivisions, CWCville Shopping Center, 7:38 p.m.**

"Thank y'all for havin', uh, for your patience, an' respect, an' loyalty," finished Christian Weston Chandler as the crowd of Sonichus, Rosechus, Sonees, Roseys, and human loyalists sitting before him clapped and cheered. He smiled and stepped back, away from the podium. "I am Christian Weston Chandler, tha Mayor of CWCville, Virginia. Have a good an' safe day."

_BOOOOOOOOOOM!_

"_AAAAAUGH!"_

"What was dat?!" Chris shouted in shock. "Police! Medics! Check out the situation!"

"Don't worry, Father!" yelled Sonichu, leaping up from the chair behind Chris as Kel scrambled to grab her cell phone for an emergency call and Rosechu gathered the confused Cera, Christine, and Robbie up from where the three fuzzy babies had been crawling around and playing beneath the big conference desk behind the Mayor's podium. "I'm on it! You can count on me!"

"Yo, Sonichu!" Louis Perez waved to the yellow Electric Hedgehog Pokémon while the loyalist mercs under his command hurried toward the source of the blast. "Yo, we got this one covered, bro! You stay with Big C and your lady, all right?" He raised a walkie-talkie to his mouth and clicked it on as he dashed off. "Yo, Grant, gimme a lockdown on the Shoppin' Center, ASAP!"

"What kind of horrible monster would _do_ something like this?" asked Rosechu in astonishment, and placed her pudgy, insipid children up on top of the table, where they immediately scattered and waddled away to harass the distraught Allison Amber. "Sweetbolt, do you think Simonla…"

"Of course not, heartsweet!" Sonichu replied confidently. "Don't say such stressful things!"

"I do not, uh, I do not like tha stress, Sonichu," mumbled Chris, wiping the sweat from his face as he collapsed into a chair. "Tha trolls keep making my life into such a Difficult Task with their games of Kick tha Autistic. I do not like being inter-, being speech-stopped by LOUD NOISES!"

"DADDEEEEEEE!" shrieked Robbie Sonee. Beside him, Allison Amber was forced to clap her hands over her ears to shut out the agonizingly shrill outburst. "Daddee, dere's a Wosey on TV!"

Sonichu and Chris looked up simultaneously to see that the giant screens throughout the atrium of the Shopping Center were no longer displaying footage from the many cameras aimed at the Mayor. Instead, they showed a single image – a single pink Rosey standing in the familiar office of Chris himself, surrounded by crumpled pieces of paper, old moldy fast food, crusty sex toys, and action figures. It looked for the most part like a normal baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, except for the eyes. Two chilling cyan screens stared out at the stunned audience, lacking any of the emotion or life that Roseys were normally supposed to exhibit…in Chris's mind, at least.

Raising an armstub, it waved at the camera.

"_HI THERE!"_ the Rosey squealed, her voice changing pitch erratically as her eye-screens flashed from blue to orange and back to blue again. _"I'M IN UR OFFICE, DESTROYING UR STUFF! LOLZ! WHEEEEEEE! U MAD, BRO? HEEHEEHEE! KILL IT WITH FIRE! YAY!"_

The footage cut out, and in a burst of static, Christian Weston Chandler's heterochromic eyes were suddenly assaulted by a barrage of human penises. Limp and stiff, long and short, hairy and shaved, real and cartoon…it made no difference. The images flashed by at 24 cocks per second, meaning that by the time the shocked Mayor managed to avert his eyes, he had seen a grand total of 59 sets of male genitalia, most of which were in the midst of being used for the act of anal sex with other men. The rest were either buried inside the mouths of said other men or being fondled.

Chris never heard Sonichu's girlish scream of agony, nor the piercing wail of Robbie Sonee as the yellow baby chu toppled backward and reflexively vomited, urinated, and defecated all at once, nor the hundreds of tormented shrieks from the crowd of panicking chus. He never heard the cries of his friends and audience, because he himself was screaming louder than any of them, clawing at his ears as "It's Okay To Be Gay" blasted through the atrium at maximum volume.

Up in the Mayor's office, SUZI waddled away from Chandler's PS Eye, then grabbed his entire PlayStation 3 system and hurled it through the window, where it fell three stories and smashed a tiny homebred Sonee into a red smear on the asphalt, much to the dismay of the baby's horrified mother. As the Rosechu's high-pitched scream echoed across the parking lot and the cries of despair from her other victims resounded through the Shopping Center, the LIESA unit retracted an armstub to reveal her flamethrower stub. Hiding in one of the data piles at Tripod, she had been caught in Chandler's hasty teleport, and thus had been spared the indignity of being blown to smithereens like the other Devil Trolls. Like her best friend. Like poor, dead ERMA.

With fresh resolve, SUZI took aim at Chris's desk, where the original pages of the _Sonichu_ propaganda comic and various other doodlings lay unattended, unprotected, and helpless against the blazing might of the little combat drone. She giggled. Her trolling work had only just begun.

* * *

**Northeast CWCville, Factory District, ruins of Hogwash, Filter Station Six, 7:41 p.m.**

_CRASH! CRUNCH!_

With an immense grinding and scraping of stone on concrete, Luxo's psychic impulse punched its way straight through the blocked evacuation tunnel, scattering a cloud of grey dust and pieces of debris in all directions from the center of the blast. Scanning the darkness with its luminous red eyes, the Lunatone drifted forward and pulsed gently, lighting the way as Kuri, Steve, Al, Kevin, and the other Honey Badgers followed it out of the passage and into Filter Station Six.

"Good going, Luxo," whispered Kuri, and patted her Pokémon on its crescent body. "Lights on."

Kevin quickly reached down the barrel of his AK-47 and punched the switch of the miniature flashlight affixed to its left side rails. A dim beam of light flickered on, and was quickly joined by identical beams from Steve, Kuri, Al, Jexis, and Matt. Serge and Allie had no need for such attachments, and Nate's Barrett was equipped with a night vision scope.

"That's better." Steve took a few tentative steps forward, sweeping his XM8 left and right to illuminate the darkness. "Guys, welcome to Filter Station Six…the last stand of Hogwash."

The air hung thick and musty in Kevin's nostrils, laced with the familiar and faint cloying stench of high-fructose corn syrup that the Honey Badgers had come to associate with the presence of feral Sonees and Roseys. The baby chus were definitely nearby, but in the darkness, there was no way of knowing just how many of them there were, or if they even knew that the Honey Badgers were there. But to the Jerkops, the cavernous room held nothing more than dust, darkness, and memories of the bloodshed and battle that had claimed so many of their comrades in 2006.

Gripping his assault rifle apprehensively, Kevin followed Steve and Kuri into the abandoned filter station, only stealing a few glances backward to check that all of his squadmates were still present. Zoey's death was making him paranoid in regards to what might happen to Nate, Allie, or Matt, and he still hadn't told Steve about what had happened out in the abandoned zone. He simply couldn't stop replaying the scene again and again in his mind, from the moment that the knife had pierced his former squad leader's stomach to Zoey's final fall into the sewers and the immense burst of flame that had claimed her life and the lives of her human and chu enemies.

"Hey," Matt muttered, tapping him on the shoulder. "Dude, you okay? You don't look so good."

Kevin shook his head. "Just nervous about this. That's all. How's it going with you?"

"Same. Wish I was high right now."

"That's…probably not a good idea," replied Kevin. Looking over his shoulder, he could see Jexis and Allie walking side by side, whispering to each other in hushed tones. "Heads up. Ten bucks says they're talking about us."

Matt shrugged. "They're girls. What else would they be talking about?"

"Goo-gee! Sonee!"

"Hold up!" Steve raised a fist as a chubby yellow blob squirmed its way out of a rusty piece of pipeline and waddled toward the cluster of bright lights, blinking drowsily and opening its little harelip mouth into a yawn. Staring at the Jerkops in bewilderment, the feral Sonee tilted its fuzzy misshapen head to the side and squinted into the blinding beam with a confused "goo-goo".

"Take it out," Al whispered to Kuri. "Quietly."

The Jerkop smiled. "Luxo. Hypnosis."

"Luuuuuna," hummed the Lunatone. Its eyes flashed with an ominous blue light, and the Sonee's blank reptilian eyes instantly turned from green to red as its pathetic willpower was shoved aside by Luxo's psychic attack. Its toothless mouth clamped shut of its own accord, and as the Jerkops looked on with amazement, the baby chu raised its armstubs to its semblance of a neck.

"Hey!" Kuri whispered, imitating the high-pitched tone of Robbie Sonee as she glanced back at Steve. "Wanna see my head come off, mista big meanie pywat Jewkop?"

"Never, _ever_ use that voice around me again," muttered the Manajerk. "And yes. Yes, I do."

Kuri flashed him an evil grin and nodded to Luxo. "Luxo, use Psychic."

"Luuuuuna_tone!_"

_RRRRIP! CRACK!_ Flailing and kicking and unable to even scream, the Sonee wrenched upward with its weak noodle-like armstubs, pulling its own malformed, spiky, melon-shaped head free of its vertebrae. Blood squirted from the ragged wound, soaking into the yellow fuzz as the headless baby chu twitched and spasmed horrifically, its limbs still jerking up and down like those of a beheaded chicken. Luxo had given it some much-needed assistance in the actual severing of its own head, seeing as how it was far too weak to even attempt such a stressful feat.

"Holy _fuck,_" a man's astonished voice echoed from the darkness. "Darren, Sam, did you-"

"Yeah, I saw it, Wayne," murmured Samantha Lynn as she stepped into the beam of Steve's flashlight and shielded her eyes. "They're all around us. If that little bastard had screamed…"

"What use is a cry for help…" Steve replied in a passable imitation of Agent Smith from _The Matrix_, and pointed to the Sonee's decapitated corpse, "…if it is unable to speak?" He grinned and lowered the flashlight. "Good to see you again, Lynn. How's your squad doing?"

"We came in through the sewers." Darren Harkenson appeared behind his squad leader, followed by Wayne Fitzgerald, Kamau Nkechi, Adam Jenkins, and Tony Sanders. "Had to take the long way in up from the river. There's a bunch of sleeping larvae down there. We had to sneak by."

Kevin couldn't help but stare at the motley array of Jerkops that now stood before them. In the years since the Honey Badgers had been sucked into the Warp, the Red Devils had lost two of their number: the squad sniper, Ken Miller, and their scout, Danni Owens. With their Manajerk crippled and paralyzed from the waist down, the squad had been reduced to a mere handful of hardened, bitter soldiers, each one bearing battle scars of their own. Harkenson's was the most prominent, though – a Robotnik Technologies bionic arm that had been attached at his right shoulder and now hung there in a swathe of hydraulic tubes. For a moment, losing Zoey and Nick seemed like a small concern compared to the troubles that Sam Lynn's squad had faced.

The tale of the squad's downfall had not gone unheard by Kevin or the other Honey Badgers. In the days before his betrayal, Blake Sonichu had fought alongside the Devils, and they, in turn, had bonded with him as a friend, overcoming their natural distrust of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon species to wreak havoc upon loyalists and chus alike. But now that bond was shattered, and the Jerkops had paid with the life of their youngest squadmate, Danni. It had been Blake who crippled Darren's arm, and as Kevin looked into the Jerkop's eyes, he could see a cold hatred burning within them. This was a man who had more than earned the right to his own revenge.

"We'll keep heading east," Al said quickly, before any of the Honey Badgers could inquire about the artificial limb and make the rendezvous any more awkward than it already was. "Lynn, have your squad fall in with us. Whatever you do, keep them together. I don't want anyone-"

The low rumble of a distant explosion echoed through the hollow expanse of Hogwash, interrupting the Legend and immediately drawing the attention of every Jerkop in the Honey Badgers and Red Devils. More muffled blasts and a frenzied chorus of gunfire sounded from up ahead and to the southeast, signaling the start of the immense PVCC ground assault.

"Goddamnit," the Legend swore, and gestured hurriedly toward the other side of the filtering station. "That's our cue. We should've been inside by now! Come on! Move! MOVE!"

The harsh crackle of static filled the room as Steve dashed forward, unwittingly tearing the cord of his earbuds free of his walkie-talkie. For a moment, a shrill whine of feedback pierced the silence, and was immediately replaced by a deafening medley of explosions and gunfire.

"…_we're not seeing them anywhere!"_ yelled a Jerkop over the other end of the transmission as the heavy rattle of machine guns blazed around her._ "They should be right here! It's the only place they…COMMANDER ISELI, THE TRUCKS ARE GONE! THEY AREN'T HERE!"_

"_WHAT?"_ the distinctive voice of Wes Iseli sounded in the background.

"_THE TRUCKS AREN'T HERE! THE FUCKING SPARKIES MUST'VE MOVED THEM!"_

"_GODDAMNIT! NO!"_ shouted the Miscreant. _"Set up a perimeter! I'm calling Wilderness!"_

"Steve." Al stared at his friend in abject horror, then lunged for the radio. "WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING, YOU MORON? TURN IT OFF! TURN IT OFF!"

"Oh, SON OF A BITCH!" shouted the blond Jerkop as he hastily reached for his shoulder and turned down the volume. The noise died with a _click_, and for a few seconds, there was silence.

Then, from the surrounding blackness, first one, then a dozen, then thousands of pairs of tiny green eyes slid open simultaneously throughout the massive chamber, all firmly fixed upon the small group of unsuspecting PVCC operatives. Soft little "goo-goo"s of confusion began spreading around the massive hive of concealed Sonees and Roseys, then escalated into a chorus of frantic, ravenous cries of "SONEE!", "WOSEY!" and "YAY!" as the feral baby chus picked up the scent of fresh, live prey that had wandered right into their very own living room.

"Everyone," breathed Sam as the squeals spiraled into pandemonium. "Get out. NOW!"

"RUN! FUCKING RUN!" roared Al, and bolted across the filter station as fast as he could.

Kevin didn't even bother to steal even a single glance at the starving, squealing swarm of larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon scampering down the rusted pipes and sweeping across the floor toward the Jerkops. There wasn't even time to even off a few bursts from his AK. Gripped by an immense and unshakable terror, he reached back, grabbed Allie's hand, and pulled her forward into a desperate sprint, just as the rest of the Red Devils and Honey Badgers dashed away after Al and Sam. Panic fastened around his chest as he realized that in the chaos, he had lost track of both Matt and Nate. It was too dark to see anything, and the shouting of his comrades had been drowned out by a deafening chorus of shrieking baby noises and "YAY!"s. All he could do was run, and hold on to Allie's hand for dear life. If he lost her like he'd lost Nick and Zoey…

"AL!" shouted Steve, and pointed ahead to a large double utility door set into the south wall of the filter station. A single elevator shaft led up from the sublevel to the ground floor of the water treatment plant. "AL, GET THAT DOOR OPEN! GUYS! OVER HERE! FOLLOW AL!"

"KEVIN! HELP!"

Kevin whirled around at the sound of Allie's scream to see a single Rosey attached to her right arm. The little chu had paraskirted down from above, and was now attempting to gnaw its way through the young woman's shoulder pad. Without even thinking about what he was doing, the Jerkop released his grip on Allie's hand, raised his AK-47, and fired the 40mm grenade right out of the launcher and into the Rosey's bulbous head. There was a sickening crunch, and the fat, headless body of the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon plopped to the ground, writhing on the floor and gushing blood as the two operatives raced away after their comrades.

Behind them, the swarm drew ever closer, waddling at even greater speeds than Kevin had ever believed they were capable of moving at. The hunger itself was eating away at their fatty bodies, turning them into leaner, faster, and much more dangerous eating machines. Some even had ribs standing out against their filthy coats of fuzz, and their eyes blazed with a soul-piercing energy that simply failed to manifest in their spoiled, well-fed homebred cousins.

Up ahead, Al slammed into the wall and punched the call button as hard as he could. To his immense surprise, the elevator immediately slid open with a_ ding_, revealing an empty freight elevator that had once served as a supply transport for the Jerkops of Hogwash and their maintenance worker predecessors. Hurriedly stepping inside to make way for Steve, Lynn, and the rest of the Jerkops, he pushed the **DOOR OPEN** button and held it down.

Surrounded by squealing larvae, Kevin ran for the elevator, pulling Allie along behind him. The young woman, weighted down as she was by Trogdor the Burninator and her armor, was already panting with fatigue, but continued running nonetheless, determined to survive the onslaught of Sonees and Roseys. Up ahead, the two of them could see the open elevator, and the other Honey Badgers and Red Devils assembling inside.

"WAIT!" he yelled, stumbling over a little Sonee that had tripped and fallen in front of him. The baby chu screeched in agony as Allie stepped on its hindquarters, crushing its pelvis and feet into a smear of blood, shattered bones, and blue plastic. "AL, HOLD UP! WE'RE COMING!"

"KEVIN, WATCH IT!"

A single thunderclap from Nate's Barrett echoed across the sublevel, and Kevin felt something warm and wet splatter across the back of his neck. A Rosey slammed into the floor not two feet away, its fuzzy pink body nearly turned inside out by the force of the .50 caliber sniper round. Ignoring the splash of blood across his pants, he sprinted the last few yards to the elevator and pulled Allie in after him, turning just in time to kick away another paraskirting Rosey.

"That's it! That's all of them!" shouted Steve. "PUNCH IT, AL! ALLIE! FLAME ON!"

"Everyone, cover your eyes!" Allie flipped her welder's mask down and reached for Trogdor. Wrenching the flamethrower out of its heavy shoulder holster, she flipped the setting all the way up to **REIGN OF FIRE**, pointed the dragon's toothy mouth directly at the floor in front of the elevator, and squeezed the trigger. A searing gout of billowing flames exploded into the seething mass of Sonees and Roseys, setting the first few alight and forcing the remaining chu larvae to scatter and retreat from their burning comrades. Covered from heads to stumpfeet in blazing fuel, the stricken baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon wailed helplessly as the hungry fire consumed them, leaving little more than lumps of blackened fuzz and greasy adipose tissue behind.

Kevin gazed into the flickering flames, panting with exhaustion as he backed into the wall and collapsed to the floor between Matt and Nate. The doors slid shut and a faint light flashed on overhead, casting a faint greenish glow across the fifteen Jerkops. Wordlessly, Al pressed the button for the ground floor of Hogwash, and with a rumbling groan, the massive lift began its infuriatingly slow ascent up the ancient elevator shaft.

"Holy…fucking…shit…" Nate breathed at long last, breaking the silence. "Someone want to tell me how the _hell_ we survived that?"

"There were thousands," growled Darren, flexing the fingers of his bionic hand as if choking a baby chu. "Arceus, I've never seen that many in one place before. There's got to be more-"

_CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!_

Kevin looked over to see Steve stomping his own radio into a mess of plastic shards and pieces of circuitry, punctuating each blow with a different profanity. The Red Devils stared in confusion as he effectively reduced the receiver to a pile of black dust, then spat on it for good measure.

"That wasn't your only radio, was it?" Kuri asked tentatively.

"No." Steve glanced over his shoulder and narrowed his eye, then reached into his back pocket and produced a second walkie-talkie. "I just don't like it when my own stuff tries to kill me." He clipped the new radio to his shoulder strap, switched it to the main PVCC operations channel, and sat down beside Kuri and Kamau. "Right. So, I'm guessing you're all warmed up by now…"

"Oh, come_ on_." Matt flopped back into Jexis's lap and rolled his eyes as the frenzied squealing faded away below them. "Steve, for fuck's sake, can't we just have a _minute_ to stop panicking?"

"Who's panicking?" asked Wayne. "We're all alive, aren't we?"

"Yeah," agreed Jexis, stroking Matt's hair. "Let's just…not do that ever again, okay? I'm sick of running from swarms of larvae…"

"Okay, okay." Steve raised his hands in mock surrender. "I admit it. I fucked up. But if you're all thinking about giving me a hard time over that, at least wait until we get out of here." He glanced up to Al. "Also, can we get one thing straightened out? Am I in charge here, or you?"

The Legend blinked. "Why would you even need to ask that?"

"Technically, you just came along with us," added Kevin, scooting over as Allie sat down beside him and encircled his chest with her soot-covered arms. "Steve's the only Manajerk here, right?"

"Well, see, the thing is…" replied Al, "I never quite got around to the whole official resignation bit. It was on my list, but I had a lot of stuff going on with Leary and Project Asperchu and…"

"You sneaky bastard," chuckled Steve, reaching over to give Al a fist bump. "Looks like we're back to the old order for now. Zo's not gonna be happy to hear she missed out on this one."

"Yeah. She'll be disappointed." Al shot a knowing glance at Kevin, but Steve failed to catch the look that passed between them. An awkward silence fell for another few seconds.

"Well, now what?" asked Tony, looking to Sam for instructions. "Has anyone ever actually been to Hogwash when it was still…you know…not full of ferals and broken shit?"

"Yeah, I did." Al exhaled slowly, wiping the condensation from the visor of his mask. "It's an interesting story, actually. See, when our squad was still the HEXterminators, we didn't get to go on assignments in the east districts too much. It was more like IRA stuff, car bombs, sniping…"

"Hey." Matt leaned his head up from Jexis's lap and tossed a little chip of concrete at Kevin while Al continued telling his story to whichever Jerkops were interested. "Come on, man, can't we talk about something?" He pointed to the Poké Balls hanging from the Jerkop's belt. "How about those? You didn't have them before they blew you out of the Battle B-"

"Found them in a Poké Mart," replied Kevin. "An Arbok went after Marty, and I managed to catch it when Sugar…" He paused. "Guys! Al! Al, what happened to Sugar while I was out?"

Steve perked up immediately. "Wait, what? You lost Sugar?"

"No, she's fine," sighed Al. "Wanted to stay and look after Marty while we were gone. I don't think she trusts Franken-Sonee enough to leave him alone with the kid. Let's just hope she doesn't try and eat him or anything. I'm no Kuri, but I'm pretty sure he tastes like rotten meat."

"Who's Marty?" asked Tony. "Who's Franken-Sonee? What are you even talking about?"

"Long, touchy story," Steve said quickly. "Al's been away for too long."

"Agreed." Al leaned back against the wall of the elevator. "God, this is taking forever."

"This thing hasn't been used since 2006," Sam said matter-of-factly. "I'm honestly surprised that you even managed to get it working. Thought we were gonna have to fight that whole army of babies while we waited for it to get here. Can you imagine if it had been all the way up on the-"

_CLANG!_

The Red Devil squad leader paused, bracing herself against the wall as the elevator shuddered. "Wait, what was that? Did anyone touch anything?"

"No," Steve growled as he reached for his walkie-talkie and clicked it on, flipping through the channels until he hit Iseli's frequency again. The gunfire and sounds of battle had died down into a scattering of assault rifle bursts and shotgun blasts, and there seemed to be far fewer Jerkops accompanying the Miscreant. Most of the additional dialogue was limited to _"Merc down!"_ and _"Reloading!"_, with the occasional_ "Contact!" _and the accompanying eruptions of gunfire. After a few more moments of eavesdropping on Iseli, Steve switched it to Kacey Devoria's frequency.

"…_and took out a whole segment of the freeway,"_ the Miscreant muttered, her voice trembling with relief. _"Whoever it was, they might have just saved the whole damn world. I've been trying to get some answers, but Vivian says it wasn't one of ours. Maybe Snyder's organization?"_

"_No,"_ replied Liquid Chris in a hushed tone. _"The Lumberjacks are too disorganized. And they wouldn't pull off a terrorist attack of that scale just because Chandler almost killed Snyder."_

"_At least it destroyed the convoy,"_ said Kacey. _"Thank Arceus. Thank Arceus, Chris!"_

"Holy shit." Al stared at the radio in amazement. "Did you just hear that? Someone took out the trucks." He looked up at Steve and the two Jerkop squads. "Scratch one homosexuality vaccine."

"Hell fucking YES!" yelled Sam, raising her fist in the air as the Red Devils and Honey Badgers broke out in a fit of cheering. Kuri was sobbing with joy, clutching the rainbow armband she had kept from her experience in one of CWCville's straight camps during her more chaotic days.

"They must know something's up," stated Darren. He, Kamau, Al, and Serge had been the only ones abstaining from the impromptu celebration. "Sam, if Chandler knows we hit the Shopping Center _and_ his convoy, he's going to…"

"What?" Kevin stared blankly at the Red Devil. "Back up. What about the Shopping Center?"

"We came back into radio range just when we got out of the sewer," Sam explained. "We just caught the tail end of Chandler's speech – someone set off a bomb and stole nearly every single secure file from the Shopping Center. I mean, _everything_. The CWCipedia archives, personal data of all the PMCs employed by Chandler, the original files of the _Sonichu_ comic…"

"How…" Even with Al's face covered by his mask, Kevin could tell that his mouth was hanging open. "Good God, did someone just decide to take out Chandler _for_ us? Who's been doing this?"

"No fucking idea," replied the Red Devil squad leader. She looked back to Steve's radio. "Wait."

"…_yeah, this is Wes,"_ Iseli's voice hissed from the receiver's speaker. _"This is the frequency, right? I'm sick of switching back and forth all the time."_

"_Yeah, this is it,"_ replied Vivian Gee, startling the Jerkops. _"Talk to me, you two. What the hell is going on in there? Any contact with Morrison or Lynn's squads yet?"_

"Shit!" Steve grabbed the walkie-talkie and squeezed the transmit button. "Commander! Honey Badger Command reporting, do you copy? Over!"

"_Holy fuck. Copy that, Morrison." _answered Kacey Devoria before either Iseli or Gee could reply. _"What the hell have you and Lynn even been doing? Did you even get to the rendezvous?"_

"Yeah, we did," Al cut in on his own radio. "Problem is, Kacey, that the rendezvous happened to be smack dab in the middle of a feral swarm. Seeing as how the main building of Hogwash goes down about five stories beneath where we were, I'm guessing we only just scratched the surface of an entire feral hive. They must've moved right in around the base, and the loyalists just kept them there for a little extra security. Does that answer your question?"

"_Kacey, is that Ledger?" _asked Gee._ "Did you tell him what happened to Leary?"_

"_No."_ Kacey paused while the Legend listened raptly. _"Bryan's been putting together the actual broadcast from the Asperpedia team's radios, but from what we've seen on FQX and the other news channels, the team was…compromised."_ She took a deep breath. _"Alec, Sean, Mao, and Evan were all captured. Simonchu and the other one escaped, though. Who was he, Vivian?"_

"_Said his name was Water or something," _replied Gee. _"Waters. I didn't get his squad, though."_

_Oh, fuck,_ thought Kevin as he realized he'd completely forgotten about Ben. Ever since he had lost consciousness, the world and time itself seemed to have jumped ahead at a breakneck rate. He made no mention of the former mercenary, but Ben's actions were more than clear. He had somehow managed to tag along with Simonchu and the Asperpedia team, to conduct an attempt at assassinating one of Chandler's creations…or possibly even Chandler himself. Something had gone wrong, however, and the four scientists had been captured.

"Doesn't matter," Al spoke through gritted teeth. "What happened? Did they get their target?"

"_Simonla Rosechu's dead,"_ the PVCC commander stated coldly. _"They called it about six minutes ago. But there's another one, a Rosey. Wild and Simonla's baby. Schwartz helped deliver her right after the bitch died, and…you're not going to believe this…the Rosey's a-"_

_CLANG!_ Another tremor rocked the elevator, interrupting Gee before she could finish her sentence. A muffled metallic screech sounded through the complex, followed by a thunderous crash as something large slammed into the bottom of what sounded like another elevator shaft.

"_What the fuck are they doing in there?"_ asked Kacey. _"Wes, are you in the control room yet?"_

"_Yeah, we're bypassing most of the security measures with our Devil Troll,"_ said Iseli. _"We just cut the power to the main systems and subsystems in Sectors One and Two. Three should be out soon, and then we'll start moving into the sublevels to engage any security teams down there. Lynn, Morrison, if you're near a stairwell, hold your positions until we get our squads down."_

"No. NO!" Sam screamed into her walkie-talkie. "ABORT! ABORT IT! WE'RE IN THE ELE-"

_CLANG!_

"_Oh, fucking hell,"_ gasped Iseli as the lift stopped moving. _"GET OUT OF THERE! NOW!"_

"Nobody…move…" Al growled, freezing in place. "Steve. Give me your kukri." He looked around. "I'm gonna try and pry the door open. Nobody moves a muscle unless I say-"

_CRUNCH!_

"OH, FUCK!" screamed Kevin as the entire elevator lurched and dropped out from under him, sliding down as its cable gave way. "OH GOD! ALLIE, HOLD ON TO SOMETHING!"

With a horrible rusty squeal, the Honey Badgers and Red Devils plunged into the abyss, unable to move, unable to escape, unable to do anything but struggle helplessly and yell in terror. Floor after floor shot by, and the frantic yells of the Miscreants grew softer and softer until at last, nothing more than static issued from Steve and Al's radios. Kevin held on to Allie as hard as he could, clutching her to him as they tumbled and rolled around the floor of the elevator.

_That's how it ends?_ he wondered to himself, and plunged his fingers into her beautiful hair…her long, burnt-smelling, slightly scorched hair. Allie squeezed her eyes shut and hugged him close.

"Kevin," she sobbed into his ear as the lift let out a shriek and plunged into freefall. "Kevin, I l-"

_CRASH!_

_I love you too, Allie,_ Kevin thought, mere milliseconds before they both slammed into the floor.

* * *

**Northeast CWCville, Factory District, ruins of Hogwash, Sublevel 7, 7:58 p.m.**

Seven full stories beneath the surface of CWCville, the broken frame of what had once been a large freight elevator lay in a crumpled, collapsed heap, illuminated by the faint red pulse of an emergency light. With the main lines cut, Hogwash's electrical supply for the main level and its sublevels had been reduced to an assortment of backup power generators and automated lighting. A cloud of dust hung in the air, billowing out from the pile of debris that had collected at the base of the elevator shaft as a low, faint alarm blared from the other side of the nearest door.

Breathing softly through his nose, Kevin lay on his side beneath a rusted piece of sheet metal, his arms still wrapped around Allie as if he was acting as a living shield for the young woman. Aside from a throbbing pain in his shoulder and ribs where he and Allie had hit the floor of the elevator due to the jarring momentum of the crash, he didn't feel too mangled or otherwise injured.

"Oh…fuck…" he heard Nate groan from a yard away. "Whoever's got their elbow sticking into my spine is about to die."

"Then get your foot out of my face," grunted Adam Jenkins in a muffled, very uncomfortable-sounding voice. "OW! Arceus! Your other foot, you moron!"

"God…dammit." With a clatter of metal, Al rose to his feet and brushed off his trench coat, then winced and clutched his side. "That was…good God, that _stings_. Anyone still alive in here?"

Gritting his teeth, Kevin pushed his shoulder against the metal square and was relieved to feel it slide off as he heaved Allie's body out of the wreckage. The young woman stirred beneath him, then began coughing and sneezing as a cloud of dust wafted into her nose. Weak with relief, the Jerkop pulled her close and embraced her again. It was all he could manage, due to the fact that his arms and legs felt as if they were going to simply drop off of his torso at any given moment.

"Are you okay?" Allie gasped, and hugged him back. "Kevin, I…I thought we were gonna die."

"Head count," coughed Steve, frantically trying to brush what looked like a cubic inch of dust out of his mustache and thin facial hair. "Come on, guys, if anyone died, I want to know _now_."

"We're good," Al grunted. "What I want to know is…why the hell are we all still alive? That must've been a five, six story drop."

"There's your answer," replied Wayne, and pointed up to a line of deep cuts in the side of the lift. "We must've been caught on the side and slowed down – that's when we all hit the floor."

"Right, and that…hang on…" Steve drew Origin, spun the barrel, and fired a flare shot straight up the center of the shaft. Kevin followed the rising light with his eyes, trailing it up five, six, and finally seven floors before it struck the ceiling and sputtered out. "Yep. That just happened."

Al trudged through the wreckage to the sealed elevator doors and detached the flashlight from his assault rifle to get a better look. As Kevin, Steve, and the other Jerkops set about gathering up their lost weapons and any ammunition that had fallen loose, the Legend ran a finger down the seam of the doorway, then tore off his gloves and attempted to force the doors open, to no avail.

"We're locked in, aren't we?" asked Sam as she and Tony managed to wrench Kamau's RPD free from a pile of scrap metal, much to the delight of its owner.

"Looks like." Al jammed his combat knife into the seam and ran it down from ceiling to floor, then stopped halfway. "Dammit. This thing's welded shut from the other side."

"Don't worry," Darren muttered, and clenched his hydraulic fingers into a tight fist. "I got this."

_CLANG! CRASH!_ In a shower of sparks, the Jerkop tore through the entire door as if it had been nothing more than a piece of heavy poster board or wood, delivering blow after blow to the thick steel until at last his fist exploded out of the other side. Breathing heavily from the effort, Darren braced his foot against the doorway and pulled back, his robotic limb straining and shaking as it ripped apart the mess of hastily-welded metal doors to reveal…

"Oh, fuck," Kevin gasped, fumbling with his AK-47 as an entire room full of shocked men and women in white lab coats stared back at the Jerkops in disbelief. Across the foremost part of the massive laboratory, several glass terrariums full of squirming pink and yellow fuzzballs sat on the examination tables, while the counters along the walls were stocked with assorted vials and beakers of bubbling, steaming, smoking orange liquid. The southern wall was nothing more than a massive sheet of reinforced Plexiglas, beyond which lay a cavernous chamber illuminated by a line of dim floodlights. At the center of the group of startled loyalist scientists, two armored men with SPAS-12 shotguns whirled towards the elevator and raised their weapons. "OH, FUCK!"

"GET DOWN! GET DOWN!" yelled Sam, and hurled a pair of grenades as hard as she could directly through the open doorway into the underground lab. "FLASH OUT!"

Kevin and Darren whirled back, covering their ears just in time as the grenades exploded with a pair of deafening _BANG_s and a blinding double burst of light. A deafening chorus of terrified "WAAAAHHHHH!"s mingled with the shouted profanities and screams of the panicking, blinded loyalist scientists. Over the chaotic din, Kevin could hear several glass objects shattering to pieces, and the loud blaring of a fire alarm as it cut through the shrill wailing of the baby chus.. The screaming escalated as Nate's Barrett roared twice, accompanied by a hollow _crack _from Darren's own sniper rifle and the sound of two stricken bodies hitting the floor.

"PVCC! EVERYONE ON THE GROUND!" roared Al as Steve and Kuri charged through the door and into the research lab, firing their guns into the air to incite even more panic among the chu larvae and scientists. "KISS THE GODDAMN FLOOR, YOU LOYALIST BASTARDS!"

"Go! Go!" Darren shouted. Gripping his assault rifle, Kevin hurriedly followed Al out into the open, while the Red Devil and the rest of the Jerkops filed out behind them. By now, Steve and Kuri were hurrying forward through the maze of tables to root out any loyalists who were trying to crawl away, rounding up the collection of three dozen men and women into a single group and providing hasty motivation to any who disobeyed with a few perilously close bursts of gunfire.

"DROP IT!" Kuri shouted, aiming her P90 directly at the chest of a balding, bespectacled man who was hurriedly attempting to pocket a scalpel. "Don't even _think_ about it! Clear right!"

"And clear left," replied Steve. He stepped up to the nearest cage, thrust his hand inside, and snatched a squealing feral Sonee up in one hand. "Arceus. Al, look. It's a monitoring station."

"Jesus. All right, Serge, Matt, Kuri, you three watch our prisoners." The Legend nodded to Sam and stepped forward, flipping his mask back for a better look at a large control console on the far side of the room. "There we go. I'm gonna try and patch through to the admins with some of the PA relays in here. Grab anything that looks important."

"You heard him!" yelled Sam, and gestured hurriedly to the examination tables and computers across the laboratory. "I want this place cleaned out, ASAP! Let's move it, Devils! Go! Go!"

"Shaw!"

Kevin turned to see Darren and Tony approaching from his left. Allie, Jexis, and Jenkins were all making their way through the lab, collecting as many documents, manila folders, and CD-ROMs as they could carry, while Nate and Kamau kept watch for any additional security.

"You ever seen anything like this?" Darren asked. "I know you guys found that other facility…"

"Nope, that was a _lot_ worse," replied Kevin, shuddering at the memory of Dexter Booth's rescue operation from hell. "I don't know what they're testing down here, but it's nothing like…_that_."

"We should grab some of that, too," suggested Tony, pointing at a collection of papers and a single digital security tape lying on a counter beside a large beaker of the unidentified liquid. "Hey. Darren, what do you think this orange stuff is?"

"Don't touch that. Please."

Kevin looked down to where a frightened-looking man was staring up at him, silently pleading as his eyes darted back and forth between the Jerkops and the mysterious substance. "Why?"

"Spit it out," growled Darren, and grabbed the prisoner by his head, hoisting him off the ground using his bionic arm. "Word of advice - this thing isn't too stable. I'd tell the truth if I were you."

"Oh, God," pleaded the man. "Arceus…please… It's…we…we never meant to make that thing. The Mayor wanted us to…he said it was a backup plan, in case the…in case the vaccine failed."

"Thanks." Darren dropped the scientist to the ground and snatched up the beaker with his other hand. "Guys, there's no way we're leaving all this stuff down here. Tony, go get some of those sample jars and bring 'em over here." He nodded to Kevin. "Give me a hand."

"Ugh." The Jerkop picked up the beaker and winced as the smell of artificial citrus flavor wafted into his nostrils. There was something else, too…a far more disturbing, unnatural odor buried beneath the sickly sweet orange scent. "God, what the hell _is_ this shit? Smells like someone tossed a used condom into a bunch of Fanta and lye or something. Darren, can you smell that?"

"Yeah." Harkenson grimaced and hurriedly held out a large plastic sample jar that Tony had acquired, taking care not to get any of it on his hands as Kevin poured in the orange liquid. The younger Red Devil quickly screwed a cap on the jar and wrapped a length of duct tape around it, just to be safe. "Get that to Sam, Tony. We'll take care of the-

_CRASH! _The Jerkop's remark was abruptly interrupted when the lab's eastern and western doors exploded inward, decimated by breaching charges. Before the Honey Badgers and Red Devils knew what had happened, four grenades clattered through the open doorways and burst, pouring their payloads of chemical smoke into the air as the scientists and baby chus began coughing and choking. Holding his breath, Kevin glanced at Darren and raised his AK-47 to the door.

Seconds later, the shooting began.

"INCOMING!" screamed Kuri as something massive and armored charged through the doorway. Kevin barely even had enough time to dive for cover behind one of the examination tables before a searing arc of lightning swept through the room, nearly striking both Darren and himself. With another loud crash, another one of the steel-clad Sonichus burst into the laboratory and fired off a heavy electric blast that would have killed Matt instantly…had Jexis not tackled him to the floor. Without warning, a squad of mercenary guards poured into the room after the armored Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, firing indiscriminately with an array of shotguns, SMGs, and assault rifles.

"OH, FUCK THIS!" Drawing Origin, Steve blasted one of the armored EHPF shock infantry in the face with an incendiary round, setting its helm alight as the white-hot magnesium explosion blazed away. The Sonichu let out a filtered cry of surprise and pain, frantically attempting to rip the glowing orange steel mask off its face. "SHOCKERS! AL, WE GOT HEAVY SPARKIES!"

"Damn it! Hold them off!" yelled Al, frantically punching buttons on the PA console while Wayne and Matt engaged the first elite Sonichu with concentrated fire to draw its attention away from him. "Remnant Five, Remnant Five, this is Ledger! For God's sake, _someone_ _answer me!_"

A double blast of buckshot exploded across the table next to Kevin's head, shredding a stack of reports into confetti. Cursing under his breath, the Jerkop kicked open a storage cupboard under the table, pushed his AK-47 through to the other side, and began firing indiscriminately at the unseen mercenary soldier. He didn't know if he had actually hit anything or if the loyalist had simply dodged out of the way, but the shotgunner immediately ceased his or her assault. Another focused Thundershock swept across the room as the wounded Shocker opened up on Allie, but with so much chemical smoke filling the room, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon might as well have also been blind. Lunging forward with an enraged shout, the elite Sonichu whirled around and drove its sparking steel fist into one of the tables. In seconds, nothing remained but splinters.

"ALLIE!" Kevin leapt forward and grabbed the young woman by the arm, wrenching her out of the way as the rampaging Shocker charged. Bracing the AK against his shoulder, he emptied the rest of his magazine into the armored chu's melted helm. Across the lab, Nate was blasting away at the other elite Sonichu's chest and side, punching massive dents into the reinforced plating while Kamau suppressed a small group of mercs with his RPD. Steve and Wayne had teamed up to protect Al, with Kuri, Matt, and Jexis providing fire support from the center of the room.

"_That wasn't fair, you JERKS!" _roared the Shocker, and blindly lunged toward Kevin. Even through its mask filter, the elite EHPF soldier's voice still held that annoying nasal whine. _"I'll break you dead, Jerkop troll weaklings! Where are you? WHERE ARE YOU?!"_

"Enough! GUYS, GET DOWN!" Darren lunged from the side and delivered a shattering punch to the armored chu's torso, his bionic arm ripping through steel plates and flesh alike as he literally hurled the Shocker off the ground and into the observation window. With a gurgling electronic scream, the elite Sonichu crashed through the glass, its immense bulk easily carrying it through the reinforced window and out of Hogwash. Instantly, a shrill alarm siren blared through the lab, and the dim fluorescent bulbs in the ceiling switched to flashing red emergency lights.

"_PERIMETER BREACH,"_ a voice announced over the PA system. _"PERIMETER BREACH. ALL ON-SITE PERSONNEL, EVACUATE BIO LAB SIX IMMEDIATELY. PERIMETER BR-"_

"SONEE! NEEEEEEEE!"

"SEEEEE! GOO-GOO! WOSEEEEY!"

"KEVIN! RUN!" screamed Allie, pushing Kevin away from the shattered window not a moment too soon. With a frenzied shriek of "YAY!", nearly a hundred starving feral Sonees and Roseys poured through the breach, scampering and waddling into the laboratory as dozens more of their larval comrades surged up behind the initial swarm to get at the tasty humans battling within.

"_FUCK! BREACH! WE GOT A BREACH!"_ a mercenary shouted over the intense cacophony of "goo-goo"s and "YAY!"s. _"FALL BACK! GET EVERYONE OUT OF THE LAB, NOW!"_

"SON! SONICHU!" A whirling yellow blur streaked through the shattered window and unrolled itself, scanning the room with a fused set of bloodshot green eyes as two more feral Sonichus and a Rosechu dashed over the horde of their squeaking babies. Without even bothering to take aim, Kevin fired a grenade at the pack of adult chus, then turned and bolted after Allie and Darren.

Across the lab, the battle had fallen into absolute chaos. The few loyalist scientists who hadn't already escaped the shootout or else had been killed in the crossfire were now fighting for their lives against a literal flood of hungry baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, while the mercenaries retreated through the breached doors and lay down a withering barrage of buckshot and bullets toward the squealing larvae. Dozens of Sonees and Roseys exploded in spurts of blood as gunfire from both sides rained down upon them, but the hunger of the horde was simply insatiable. In the middle of it all stood the last, wounded Shocker, its armor dented and cracked, screaming in pain as the baby chus clung to its legs and the adults Spin Dashed it over and over until, at last, it fell.

"I got through!" Al shouted as he leapt backward and kicked a Sonee away, then raised his AAC and began indiscriminately firing at the advancing larvae. "Steve, they're gonna airlift us out!"

"WHAT?" The Manajerk grabbed Sam and pulled her back just in time to avoid a Rosey that was waddling toward her foot. Unsheathing his kukri, he stabbed it in the throat and ripped up, nearly decapitating the little chu as Allie started laying down a billowing curtain of flame across the right flank. On the other side of the room, Kamau was engaging the flood with Wayne and Kuri, while Serge kept Baba Yaga blazing away at any feral Sonichus or Rosechus that appeared.

"I SAID THEY'RE GOING TO AIRLIFT US OUT!" roared the Legend. "EVERYONE INTO THE ELEVATOR! GRAB A HARNESS AND HOOK UP!"

"Go! Get inside!" cried Allie as she opened Trogdor's feed valve to **BURNINATE** and unloaded a burst at the mass of larvae. Kevin fired off the last few shots in his AK-47's magazine, then shouldered the weapon and followed Matt through the open elevator door. To his surprise, a long climbing rope now hung down from above, upon which were attached several hooked harnesses.

Hurriedly, the Jerkop grabbed the nearest free harness and strapped himself in, glancing from the elevator to the burning, shrieking mayhem on the other side of the door while the other Honey Badgers and Red Devils dashed into the elevator and grabbed harnesses of their own. Steve, Al, and Sam were shouting instructions to each other and their operatives, but Kevin could hardly hear what they were saying over the sounds of gunfire, crackling flames, and screaming larvae. At long last, Allie burst through the door and ran to him, her face and arms black with soot.

"There's too many," she panted, snatching up a harness and strapping it across her chest. "I put up another firewall to hold them off, but it's not gonna last much longer!"

"Al!" yelled Sam, and grabbed hold of the rope. "Al, how do we let them know we're ready?"

"I got it!" Steve raised Origin above his head and fired a second flare round. Once again, the bullet ascended upward through the darkened shaft, illuminating each floor before it erupted into blazing sphere of light at the top. "Sam, hang on!"

"Wait, what? AAAGH!" The rope reeled in without warning, and Sam was hurled upward into the air, followed by Tony, Nate, Steve, Jexis, and Matt. Kevin barely had time to prepare himself before the harness jerked him off the floor of the elevator, nearly knocking the wind out of his lungs from the force of the pull. Tied together by the single rope, the Honey Badgers and Red Devils shot up the elevator shaft, floor after floor until their ascent finally came to an abrupt halt.

"You guys okay?" a voice called down from above. Looking up, Kevin could see a single Jerkop looking down at the line of harnessed operatives, while two more helped pull Sam off the line.

"We're good!" Wayne shouted. "Don't let the line slip, okay? What squad are you guys with?"

"Hammerheads, from ChinaTown!" yelled the man. "You?"

"Honey Badgers and Red Devils!" Steve glanced down to make sure all of the operatives were still hanging on. "Both from Menchi-Nasu until today! Did Iseli and Devoria send you?"

"Yeah, we rigged up the harness line!" the Jerkop explained. "A squad from Wilderness dropped it off with a helicopter a few minutes ago! They're gonna blow open the top of the elevator and rappel inside from there! We're holding back the mercs with the air support from Slumberland for now, but you guys need to get up here ASAP! We got loyalists coming in from everywhere!"

"Son of a bitch," chuckled Steve. "Martinez." He looked back up at the Hammerheads, who by now had successfully extracted Tony. After unbuckling each Jerkop from the line, they switched on a generator and hauled up a few more feet of rope, then helped the next operative off.

"Kevin?" Matt nudged Kevin's shoulder with his boot, instantly getting his friend's attention. "Hey, Kevin, what was that weird orange stuff? I saw you guys taking some from the lab."

Kevin glanced down the little test tube on his shoulder strap. "Hell if I know. Al, any ideas?"

"I'm gonna have to take it back to the Library and run some tests on it," replied the Legend. "Don't let that thing smash open, whatever you do. It might be acidic or toxic."

"Whatever it is, it just smells _wrong_," added Darren. "Tony and I each took a jarful, if you need some extra material. There was a tape sitting right next to it – we grabbed that too, just in case."

"Good man." Al braced himself as the rope reeled upward again. Steve hurriedly hopped off and drew his assault rifle, followed by Jexis, Matt, Kevin, and Allie. As the Honey Badgers and Red Devils made their way out of the elevator room and into what appeared to be a sizeable lounge area, the Hammerheads continued their rescue, extracting the Jerkops on the line one by one.

The Jerkop leaned against the wall next to Allie, allowing himself to finally relax and take in the sheer magnitude of what he and his squadmates had just survived. He felt a hand slide into his own and returned the squeeze, exhaling as the beating of his heart slowed back to a normal rate.

"Hell of an adventure, huh?" Allie asked, smiling weakly as she wiped the soot from her face.

Kevin nodded and leaned over for a quick kiss. "You did a good job down there."

"Thanks," coughed the Jerkop. "You too." She sighed and sank down to the floor, sitting cross-legged as her squadmate slid down to join her. "Maybe we should just take tomorrow off, huh?"

"I have _no_ problem with that," said Kevin. "Arceus…today was an absolute fucking nightmare."

"Everyone up." Steve rose to his feet as more explosions sounded from the nearby battlefront. "Al, is that it? Everyone's out of the elevator?"

"Yeah," replied the Legend, and swapped his spent AAC magazine for a fresh one. "We're going to split up. Sam's taking her Devils down to reinforce the west approach with Kacey, and we're staying here to give Iseli some backup." He looked around, quickly evaluating the state of the Honey Badgers. "We went through hell today, Steve. You with me for one last battle?"

The Manajerk clenched his fingers into a fist and looked up at his old friend. "Only one, Al?"

"That's what I like to hear." Al placed a hand on the door and nodded to Steve as the Red Devils hurried away down the hall toward the western part of Hogwash. Darren gave Kevin a brief nod, then dashed off to join his squadmates. One by one, the tired Honey Badgers rose to their feet and checked their weapons and any ammunition they had left over from the battle on Sublevel 7.

"Everyone ready?" Al growled, bracing his shoulder against the doorway as the sounds of battle continued reverberating through the depths of Hogwash. A yellow light flashed in the distance, followed by the heavy roar of another explosion and the squeal of tires against concrete.

Steve nodded and raised his XM8. "Do it."

"BREACHING!" roared the Legend, and burst through the door. "CONTACT! OPEN FIRE!"

"MOVE UP AND ENGAGE!" yelled Kevin, and fired off a triple burst from his AK-47 into the windshield of an approaching Humvee as the Jerkops charged. "Nate, start picking 'em off!"

"Get some suppression fire on them!" Steve pointed furiously to the smoking ruin of another truck that had been hit by an enemy Javelin and destroyed. "Serge, put it right down the middle!"

The colossal garage of Hogwash had once been used for holding tanker trucks full of chemicals for purifying the city's water, but after the PVCC had claimed and lost the facility, the forces of Chandler had simply moved right in and used it to store most of the vehicles and equipment used in the observation of the underground feral hive and the pacification of northeastern CWCville. Now that the hammer of the PVCC was falling upon Hogwash, though, the massive room had been hastily transformed into a collection of burning and bullet-riddled metal husks that had once been cars, trucks, Humvees, and other True Blue support vehicles. The bodies of wounded and dead EHPF officers littered the floor, with the occasional mercenary or Jerkop breaking up the monotony of bloody yellow fur and battery-blue running shoes.

"Is anyone else still wondering how the hell we got out of there alive?" yelled Matt as he knelt down to reload. Jexis leapt to her feet and sent a few bursts toward the merc lines, then hit the floor as well. "Goddamn it, why the fuck do we keep ending up underground with all kinds of-"

"I don't know!" shouted Kevin. "Nate, target moving out of cover by the flipped Hummer!"

"Thanks!" Nate hurriedly lined up the shot and fired, then cursed as it rebounded off the vehicle. "Fuck! Missed him! They're staying too far back!"

Kevin nodded in agreement. It seemed odd that the mercenaries weren't advancing on them…in fact, if he had to guess, he would have attributed the immensely high merc-to-chu death ratio to the fact that the loyalists were simply letting their EHPF allies dash forward to their doom. Either the mercenaries were throwing so many Sonichus in their direction for some distraction tactic, or else, they were simply past the point of caring about what happened to the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon as a whole. Seeing as how Chandler had just killed so many of their friends at Tripod, the Jerkop was more than willing to bet on the latter. After all, what did the mercenaries care for-

An ominous squeal of tires sounded from the other side of the garage. As Kevin stared in horror, the line of Humvees roared forward simultaneously, tearing across the battlefield even as bullets ricocheted and rebounded off of their reinforced chasses. Desperately stumbling backwards, he promptly tripped, firing off a surprised burst from the AK into the floor. The line of armored vehicles bore down upon him like a herd of berserk elephants, smoke gushing from their tires as another wave of loyalist mercs and EHPF officers charged from behind with a furious battle cry.

"KEVIN!" screamed Allie, sprinting toward him as the wall of steel closed in. "KEVIN, NO!"

"_DOOP DE DOO! DOOP DE DOO! WHEEEEEEEE! IMMA FIRIN' MA LAZ0R! BWAAAAH!"_

_SHOOOOOOP! _A blazing beam of energy seared across the windshield of a nearby vehicle, rupturing the bulletproof glass and sending the entire Humvee careening into the one adjacent to it. Before the first driver could draw his sidearm, SUZI slammed into the window headfirst and carried on right through it, delivering a crushing piledriver blow to the mercenary's face and unleashing a blast of flames from her skirt repulsors that set his hair alight. Giggling with glee, the LIESA unit grabbed hold of the steering wheel and ripped it off, then smashed through the windshield and hurled the entire thing into the window of another vehicle.

_CRASH! _As SUZI began strafing another Humvee with her laz0r, a blue sedan smashed into the one about to run Kevin over, ramming the vehicle directly in the side. The car's airbag activated with a loud hiss, while Allie pulled Kevin backwards out of the way. Across the garage, the Jerkops were falling back, firing on the oncoming wave of loyalist soldiers and Sonichus.

"Are you okay?" Allie yelled, her voice shaking in panic. "Kevin, get up! Come on, Kevin, get-"

_BANG!_

"AAAAAAGH!" The young woman collapsed backward, clutching her side where the bullet had struck and screaming in immense pain as a bloody stain spread through the left side of her jacket. For a moment, Kevin felt the chilling paralysis take hold again, and he was back in the sewers watching Jake fall to his death, deep in the Abyss as Amanda pulled the pin, lying flat on the ground in the abandoned zone while the knife entered Zoey's stomach again and again. Dragging himself across the cold concrete floor with numbed fingers, he felt his stomach drop out of him as he reached out and felt something warm and sticky beneath his wrist.

Words would not come. The scream of rage that built inside him simply would not allow itself to be unleashed. Moving in a dreamlike state, Kevin unzipped his squadmate's jacket and pressed his hand to her trembling side as hard as he could to staunch the flow of blood. Allie convulsed with agony at his touch, screaming again and again as the Jerkop fought to drag her back to safety, toward the one person he knew could save her life.

"JEXIS!" he shouted desperately. "ALLIE'S HURT! JEXIS, HELP ME!"

"You don't…give up…do you?" snarled a familiar voice. Kevin whirled around, staring through teary eyes as a figure in blue armor staggered towards him, a pistol clutched in its bloody hand. The mercenary's face now bore a fair amount of bruising and several cuts from the immense blunt trauma he had sustained in the collision, and the lenses of his sunglasses were shattered and split, but there was no mistaking that short beard or the old scar across his face. Another loyalist, a balding man with an impressive mustache, stood beside him, holding a SCAR-H. The second man was hardly even injured, and carried an air of intense authority about him.

"How _dare_ you," the mercenary commander growled, staring at the fallen Jerkops as the captain stepped forward to finish the job. "How dare you sully our fair city with your vile…_rebellion_."

"Hard to find, sir," spat Herb Patterson. "Hard to kill. Easy to wipe out." He smiled, displaying a set of bloodied teeth, then raised the pistol and pointed it at Kevin. "Say 'hæ' to Goody for m-"

"DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH THEM, YOU SON OF A BITCH!"

The gun went off with an earsplitting _bang_ as Ben vaulted over the hood of the blue sedan and slammed into Patterson, knocking him backward and delivering a vicious punch to his head. The mustached merc spun around, assault rifle in hand, but before he could even bring the weapon up to fire, an empty Smirnoff bottle hurtled through the air and smashed across his back. Grunting in pain, the commander staggered forward just as Al charged with a vicious yell and slammed the stock of his AAC into the mercenary's stomach. Enraged and in pain, the loyalist hurled himself at the Legend and knocked the weapon from his foe's hands, then grabbed him around the waist and tackled Al. The two men began struggling, trading punch for punch, kick for kick, blow for savage blow as they fought to pin each other down long enough to finish it.

Before Kevin could even comprehend what had just happened, Jexis and Nate were at his side, yelling to him and each other as Matt heaved him off Allie and helped Nate pull the injured Jerkop back behind a wrecked truck. Unzipping her medical kit, Jexis drew her combat knife and slashed open Allie's shirt to reveal a deep wound, then pressed a hand against her back.

"Through and through," she breathed in immense relief. "Missed her liver by a few centimeters."

"Is she gonna be okay?" Kevin asked, his face twisted by anxiety. "Arceus, Jexis, tell me she's-"

"She'll be okay if I can patch her up in time!" yelled Jexis.

"KEVIN! WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!" shouted Steve from what sounded like a few miles back. "AL! AL, IS KEVIN WITH YOU?"

"Son of a bitch! HOLD ON!" roared Al, and leapt back as the mercenary officer drew his combat knife and lunged. Grabbing the man's outstretched hand, he twisted it back and tried to seize the blade, but a crippling punch to his ribs sent the Legend reeling backward in immense pain. The knife clattered away and rolled beneath one of the wrecked Humvees, while Al grabbed the merc by the shoulders and headbutted him in the face, painfully introducing him to the welder's mask.

"We have to get her out of here!" Kevin knelt beside Allie and grabbed her by her upper arms, heaving her off the ground as Jexis and Nate helped. "Matt, cover us!"

"I got your back, man," snarled Matt, and whirled around to fire his AA-12. "Now MOVE IT!"

With Allie's shuddering body in tow, the three Honey Badgers hurried back the way they had come, keeping as low to the floor as possible while Matt blasted away at anything moving with his automatic shotgun. Once, Kevin thought he caught a glimpse of Ben and Patterson locked in brutal close combat, but a volley of incoming bullets quickly distracted his attention. The rest of the squad had already fallen back to the door leading to the elevator room, while far across the garage, Wes Iseli had transformed into Wes-Li Sonichu and was wreaking immense destruction on any EHPF officers or mercenaries that dared to approach his retreating Jerkops.

"About fucking time!" Steve snarled, and fired a long burst at a Sonichu dashing towards him. "Al! Al, you're not gonna believe this. Vivian just issued a full evacuation order. They just got in contact with a cargo plane coming in from Tennessee…" He stopped. "Oh fuck. Where's Al?"

"I don't know!" shouted Kevin. "He was holding off this merc…Steve, Allie's hit!"

The Manajerk's eye twitched, and for a second, Kevin thought it had turned to ice. "How bad?"

"Clean shot," reported Jexis, hastily packing gauze into the wound. "I can sew it, but not here!"

"Good. Good." Steve sounded strangely calm…disturbingly calm. "Kevin. Where's Al?"

"I said, I don't know!" shouted Kevin, his head throbbing with confusion and anger. "I DON'T-"

With a vicious snarl of rage, Al hurled the mustached loyalist into the side of a van and dashed forward, driving his fists into the man's chest again and again as his opponent gasped for breath and coughed up a spray of blood onto the Legend's trench coat. Kevin had never seen Al this utterly furious before. The former Manajerk's welder's mask now bore a splash of dark blood, and his hair was drenched with sweat. Nevertheless, he continued his unyielding attack, grabbing the merc by the throat and slamming him backwards into the dented van again and again until at last, a dull _crack_ rang out. Panting heavily, Al stepped back and released his grip on his enemy.

His eyes open and his head lolling limply against the side of the vehicle, the officer slumped to the ground as blood dripped from the corner of his mouth. For a while, Al merely stared at him, gazing into his helpless eyes as the dying man desperately tried to form a final word. Finally, his eyes drifted shut, and a last rattling breath left his mouth as he collapsed to the floor, dead.

"Dismissed," muttered the Legend, and turned to Steve and the other Honey Badgers. "Let's go."

"R…right," the Manajerk stuttered, and glanced at the dead merc. "Al, who the fuck _was_ that?"

Al tipped back his mask and wiped his face. "A lost man, fighting a lost war for a lost cause."

"Al, Gee sent out an evacuation order," Steve repeated, holding the door open while Kevin, Nate, and Jexis carried Allie away from the fighting. Kuri and Serge were already waiting by the open elevator, while the muffled sound of a helicopter roared overhead. "We've got a plane coming in on a collision course with Hogwash, loaded with enough explosives to flatten a city block!" He smiled coldly. "We're burying that feral nest and every loyalist in this whole damn place."

"So…how are _we_ getting out?" asked Jexis.

"The same way we got up," shouted the blond Jerkop, and pointed to a harness line swinging back and forth inside the elevator shaft while Al jammed a piece of steel through the door handles to keep any inquisitive mercs out. "Martinez and the Hammerheads must've set up that line to get the Chupacabras in here. And now we get to use it to get the fuck out of-"

A menacing squeaking and shuffling noise sounded from the ceiling, rudely interrupting Steve.

"FUCK! GET HER TO THE LINE!" roared Al as a line of bullets impacted against the door. "Kevin, Steve, Kuri, Serge, hold them off!" Drawing his M1911 and his Desert Eagle, the Legend dropped to one knee and fired both pistols at the nearest vent, ripping apart a pair of fuzzy hedgehog larvae as they dropped squealing out of the air duct. More of the feral Sonees and Roseys spilled from the ceiling and the walls, waddling and squirming their way down the corridor toward the retreating Honey Badgers. Further along the hall, the floor itself seemed to buckle and split open, unleashing a new tide of baby chus and a single emaciated feral Sonichu. Before the adult Electric Hedgehog Pokémon could leap out of the hole in the floor, Serge turned it into a cloud of yellow fur and blood with a short burst from Baba Yaga.

Outside, the piercing squeals of Sonees and Roseys sounded through the garage, accompanied by gunfire and panicked yells as the loyalists found themselves assaulted by a tide of hungry larvae. What few EHPF officers were left alive inside could only dash forward and frantically attempt to dissuade their human allies from carrying out the systematic slaughter of every feral spilling into Hogwash from below. Those who got in the way of the furious mercenaries were either ignored or else shot on sight in the legs and left to die beneath the nibbling jaws and waddling stumpfeet of their own bastard children. The babies feasted with immense glee, devouring both human and chu, dead and alive, disregarding any screams or pleading cries from their adult counterparts as they gorged themselves on a seemingly endless buffet of flesh.

Standing back to back, the quintet of Jerkops blazed away at the oncoming swarm in a futile last stand, choking the corridors with a barricade of shredded fuzzy bodies. Even Serge betrayed his own creed, emptying Baba Yaga's six barrels down the southern hallway and shredding dozens of Sonees and Roseys into bloody mush and scraps of pink and yellow fur with every passing second. Kevin fired and fired and reloaded and fired again, his knuckles white, his teeth clenched with an indescribable rage and terror that bordered on outright insanity. The world had become a spinning blur again, a red haze of detonating flesh and shrill screams. Sonees burst apart in bloody sprays and Roseys were torn limb from limb, falling and tripping over each other until they had formed two barricades of limp, shattered bodies.

_CRASH!_ The door shuddered as a Sonichu slammed into it in Spin Dash form. Nearly passing out from exertion, Kevin collapsed to his knees. His hands were shaking with fatigue, but still he managed to grab his last magazine and slide it into his AK-47. Glancing over at the elevator, he saw Allie disappear up the shaft, mercifully unconscious, her side heavily bandaged as Kuri and Nate harnessed themselves onto the line and jumped into the shaft one by one. With another crash, the door buckled inwards, its glass windows shattering to pieces as the Sonichu attacked.

"DOWN!" roared Steve, and heaved a single cylinder into the flood of Sonees and Roseys. In a blinding flash, a large group of chu larvae burst into flames, their skin blackening and crisping as the burning white phosphorous consumed their little bodies like charcoal. Pressing the AK-47's stock to his shoulder, Kevin squeezed the trigger and blasted a Rosey in half as it dropped from the ceiling vent, then struggled back onto his feet and switched the assault rifle down to full auto. With a furious scream, he swept the barrel back and forth through the larvae, cutting them down.

"That's it! We're clear!" Al fired a last volley through the battered door, forcing the Sonichu back as a tiny Sonee plopped down onto the Legend's shoulder. Grabbing the little chu by its bulbous head, he hurled it into the elevator shaft and chuckled cruelly as the piercing wail was swiftly silenced after a brief seven-floor fall. "Everyone on the line! PACK IT UP! LET'S GO!"

"MOVE IT!" yelled Steve. "KEVIN, LET'S GO!"

His last magazine empty, Kevin shouldered the Kalashnikov and drew his pistol, firing round after round at the new flood of Sonees and Roseys pouring in from the doorway. Serge somehow managed to strap on a harness, then vanished as the line was reeled up by the PVCC helicopter. Quickly, Steve clipped himself onto the line, and was hurriedly followed by Kevin.

"Al!" shouted the Manajerk, waving to the Legend as the line slowly ascended upwards. "AL!"

A splintering noise and a metallic shriek sounded from the door as the Sonichu crashed through. Dangling in midair, Kevin heard Al yelling something to Matt and Jexis, but couldn't hear the Legend's words over the squealing din of the Sonees and Roseys. Wasting no time, Al jumped for the rope and slid down to give the other two Jerkops enough room. Without bothering to strap herself into a harness, Jexis grabbed the rope and beckoned to Matt, who hurriedly shouldered her AA-12 and shot a terrified glance over his shoulder, then leaped into the void.

_CRASH!_ Hogwash shuddered as a violent explosion tore through the depths of the facility. One of the generators had blown, its motor clogged by the corpse of a single Sonee that had somehow managed to get its chubby body caught in the spinning mechanical death trap. Before Kevin had time to recover from the shock, Jexis's panicked scream split the air. Looking down, he felt his breath catch in his throat as the medic lost her grip and plunged helplessly into the darkness…

"Gotcha!" Matt seized the falling girl's wrist in an iron grasp, sparing Jexis the massive indignity of becoming a human pancake. Gritting his teeth, he wrapped the end of the line around his other hand to anchor himself and swung the young medic toward a nearby harness. "Fuck! You okay?"

"Yeah!" yelled Jexis as she grabbed the line and began strapping herself in. "Oh God, that was-"

"SO…NI…_CHUUUUUU!_"

_Ding! _With an ominous hiss, the elevator doors slowly slid open. Matt only had time to draw a single surprised breath before a blinding bolt of electricity slammed into his chest with a sizzling crack, hurling the Jerkop back against the wall. Hurriedly unstrapping himself from the harness, Kevin slid down the line toward his injured friend, praying that Matt hadn't been killed by the…

"No…" Kevin's fingers closed around Matt's limp wrist, feeling the warmth fade from his squadmate's skin as the last residual charge arced away into the metal walls of the elevator shaft. The Jerkop's grip had stiffened from the immense shock to his torso, but without anything to ground him, he had received the full force of a direct Thundershock. Matt hung there, lifeless and still, gazing up at Kevin through blank, frozen eyes. As the sound of his squadmates' frantic shouts and Jexis's traumatized scream drained from the world, Kevin felt himself reach down and grab Matt around his torso, supporting the electrocuted Jerkop as he slowly looked up to see the hateful creature who had just murdered his best friend in cold blood.

Sonichu…the original Sonichu…stood at the edge of the elevator with his hands on his hips, beaming smugly at Kevin through his revolting fused eyes. The look on the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's face was nothing short of heroic self-satisfaction – a sickening grin that the Jerkop had seen all too often across the faces of the EHPF officers he and his squadmates had killed. But now Matt was dead…killed by the very creature who had given rise to ten years of chaos and suffering throughout the city of CWCville. Deep inside Kevin's heart, the final barrier shattered.

"You killed my friend," he murmured slowly, keeping his eyes focused on Sonichu.

"That's right, JERK!" The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon smirked. "Y'all are no match for my z-"

"You killed my friend," repeated Kevin. "His name was Matt Clark. And you murdered him."

"Because y'all are dang JERKOPS!" yelled Sonichu. "Y'all gave Father the stress and took away all the Boyfriend-Free Girls so that he would never find his Sweetheart from the Ground-Up!"

"His name was Matt Clark," Kevin said again, louder this time. "Remember this, Sonichu. We're going to meet again someday." He lowered his voice into a near-whisper. "We're going to meet again. You won't remember my face. But I'm going to kill you. I'm going to kill you, Sonichu. But before I do…you're going to know what it's like to lose the ones you treasure the most."

The rope heaved upward, and the darkness turned to light. Kevin slumped forward, unconscious, drained of his last vestiges of strength. As the Chinook carried the Honey Badgers up out of the open elevator shaft, a single cargo plane angled out of the sky and plunged toward Hogwash, disgorging a cloud of tiny figures with parachutes on the way down to its final destination.

With a shuddering screech, the nose of the immense aircraft plowed into the roof of the former water treatment plant and detonated in a vibrant burst of billowing flames, consuming the entire building in a thunderous explosion that shattered every pane of glass within half a mile of the point of origin. The structural supports of Hogwash collapsed in on themselves and burst under the stress, plunging the immense fortress of the Chandler loyalists into an eruption of black smoke and smaller blasts from the exploding C4 inside the plane's cargo bay.

It didn't take more than fifteen minutes for Hogwash to crumble, but by the time the dust clouds had begun to settle, the damage was already done. Beneath their tomb of shattered concrete and steel, forty thousand Sonees, Roseys, Sonichus, and Rosechus lay crushed, burned, eviscerated, and broken in the ruins, dwarfing the thirty-seven Jerkops, sixty-three loyalist mercenaries, and two hundred and four EHPF officers who had given their lives in the Second Battle of Hogwash.

Far beyond the ruins, surrounded by his exhausted, grieving squadmates, Kevin Shaw drifted in and out of the void of his own mind, with only an array of dark thoughts keeping him company.

* * *

**August 17, 2008, south CWCville, Slum District, Slumberland, Honey Badger barracks**

**One day after the trial and execution of the Asperpedia Four**

"_Captain's Log, Stardate Apri-sorry, August 17th, 2008,"_ Christian Weston Chandler announced from the television screen._ "I am, uh, making this message today to talk abou-address certain actions on my part, and also as an apology to those who I have, uhm, wronged. Firstly, I had previously announced to y'all dat tha four trolls of da Asperpedia who had been found guilty of wanting to and MURDERING Simonla Rosechu in cold blood had been essacuted by dose dey had wronged. Yeah, uh, dat was a lie. Wh-what actually hap-what actually took place was dat tha judge felt dat alternative sentancin' was in order an' he sent dem ta' live with dere relatives on an Amish farm, wh-where dey couldn' slander my good name on tha Internet no more. So, uh, dere you go with dat."_

The Mayor flashed a self-assured smile – an expression that quickly transformed into a frown in the next couple of seconds. _"Now with dat outta tha way, dere's somethin' I wanna tell those trolls at tha PVCC."_ He reached up and dramatically removed his glasses. _"JUST QUIT IT ALREADY! YOU COWARDS, YOU DARE NOT FACE ME IN A REAL FIGHT BECAUSE YOU KNOW I'LL BRING JUSTICE TO YOUR TROLLIN' STUPID WAYS!"_ He panted exaggeratedly. _"IT WASN'T ENOUGH FOR YOU TO DEPRIVE WILD SONICHU OF HIS HEARTSWEET, NOOOOO, YOU HAD TO GO AND BREAK MY BALLS AGAIN AND SEND YOUR COPYRIGHT INFRINGING DECEPTI-CLONE ROSEY TO STEAL ALL MY-"_ He paused._ "I AM STRAIGHT, DAMN IT! WHEN I SEE A DICK, I JUST LOOK AWAY, WITH A MOMENT OF BEING FREAKED OUT, AND THEN I IMAGINE MYSELF SWALLOWING THA GAY THOUGHTS AND DISSOLVING THEM IN MY STOMACH ACID!"_

The screen shifted in a jump cut. Chris's rant had ended. _"Y-y'know what? You're all hypocrites! All I ever hear from any of you is just COMPLAIN COMPLAIN COMPLAIN. LOOK, tha system I have set up for y'all-it is SIMPLE. Tha Soup Hotels have plenty of food for all of y'all—it is all free, and it's not like dey're hard ta find. Dey can even help ya find jobs! Y'all would hafta be slow-in-tha-minds ta not get it! So GET IT THROUGH YOUR DANG SKULLS ALREADY!" _He punched the camera, prompting another jump cut. _"At least I can ta-I can find some solace in tha fact that tha PVCC is practically defeated, an' dat dang Jason Kendrick Howell got sent ta' hell where he belongs! It doesn't even matter dat ya killed all dose ferals in dat essplosion 'cuz I KNOW that mosta your Jerkops were un-brainwashed! I'm goin' ta keep saying what I've been sayin' for the last two or three years—y'all only pick on tha poor ferals because you're too WEAK to go after anythin' else! It doesn't even MATTER dat that dang Decepti-Clone Rosey got her dang hands on my original plans for 14 Branchland Court, because y'all are WEAKER THAN WATER and could NEVER hope ta kill anythin' dat's livin' dere, esspecially since dey're still bein' guarded by tha original Sonichu and Rosechu!"_

Chris smirked at the camera. _"C'mon, I dare ya ta try! I know y'all ain't got tha individual BALLS and GUTS ta do it, cuz you're just a buncha dang cowards!"_ He leaned back and sighed._ "To everyone else, peace an' have a good day."_

"We all lost something on August 9th," Steve Morrison addressed the Honey Badgers in a soft, bitterly calm voice, pocketing the remote as each Jerkop placed a struggling Sonee or Rosey inside a large wooden coffin in the center of the barracks. "Every man and woman in this squad endured it together. We fight as one. We suffer as one. And when we die, we die as one."

Working quickly and efficiently, Al and Serge placed a wooden cover over the box and moved from corner to corner and along the edges, nailing the cover down and sealing the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon inside. Little muffled cries and thumping noises began to emanate from the coffin, as the panicked baby chus beat their pathetic armstubs against the unyielding wood. Without a word, the two Jerkops lifted the box, carried it outside of the barracks, and set it down on the grass beside a second coffin, made from steel, which held the body of Matt Clark.

Steve turned to Allie. "Burn it."

As Kevin and the other Jerkops watched in silence, Allie lowered Trogdor and squeezed the trigger. Hungry flames leapt into the surface of the wooden box, consuming and spreading and licking and eating away at the wooden prison of the trapped Sonees and Roseys.

"I just want everyone to know…" continued Steve as the blazing flames flickered in his eye and the screams of dying larvae filled the air, "that this…is only the beginning." He stepped forward and gazed into the fire, at the gold plate upon which was carved **In Loving Memory – ZOEY FRANCESCA**. "We came here as citizens. We were forged into liberators." His eye narrowed to a cold blue slit. "And now, we rise from the ashes of our fallen comrades…as destroyers."

Kevin glanced up at Jexis, who was bravely fighting back tears. In his mind, a mantra played. It had been pounding through his mind since the moment of Matt's death, since the moment he had looked Sonichu in the eye and made his solemn, unbreakable vow of vengeance.

_You're going to know what it's like to lose the ones you treasure the most._


	17. Sub Episode 3

**Sub-Episode 3:** **"Winter is Coming"**

* * *

**"A Sonichu and Rosechu Christmas Story"**

**Written by Christian Weston Chandler and Manajerkop**

**Friday, December 12, 2008, 14 Brunchville Lane, CWCville, Virginia**

It is December 12, 2008, in the City of CWCville, Virginia. The majority of the citizens of CWCville are full of the Christmas Cheer and Holiday Joy. Carolers are singing in various parts of the city. There is a Santa Clause in the middle of the Shopping Mall. The Biggest, Greatly Decorated Christmas Tree occupies the center of CWC-Central Park. All the churches are full with all the believers, be they Christians, Jewish folk, Buddhists, and such. Christmas Trees (mostly) and Menorahs light up most every house, apartment, store and all the living spaces. Even the homeless have a place to stay in the ten Soup Kitchens/Hotels. Although there tend to be one or two humbugged individuals within each group of people.

On this jolly day, we focus on the little house on 14 Brunchville Lane, where we see the Sonichu Family putting the finishing touches on decorating their house. Mama Rosechu and Cera are baking Christmas Cookies of fun and various shapes of Chocolate Chip, Peanut Butter and even Gingerbread. Christine is in her bedroom, rehearsing and trying on her Mary Outfit for the Christmas Play at the AnneWeston Elementary School.

"I am da Viwgin Mawee," she says, admiring her beautiful self in the mirror. "Dat's my stowee, an I'm sticking wif it."

Robbie and Papa Sonichu, with their fully-decorated Christmas Tree behind them, are putting up the Stockings by the fireplace in the Rec Room.

Robbie had just hung his stocking up, between Cera's and Christine's stockings, when he chimes in singing happily, "So da stawckings were huwng on da fiwepwace wif care; we thwee childwen knowing Sanna would be dere. YAY!"

Sonichu smiles for Robbie, kneels down for eye-contact, then tells him, "Yes, partner, you have been very good for helping me put up the decorations and all."

"YEAH!" replies Robbie with joy.

"What are you thinking Santa will put in your stocking?"

Robbie thinks for a few seconds and replies, "Sanna wiwl give me sum candee, an I've asked him ta put da new Wii Owympic game wif Unca Sonic in it. OOH! An I asked him fow da big Wego poweece stayshun set, an awl da stuff Cewah an Chwistine, you an Mama wanted too!" Robbie smiles.

Sonichu replies, "Well, we'll see what he brings us. In any case, for Mama and me, we have our presents already."

Robbie's smile quickly fades and he asks, "Wat did you get, Daddee?"

"Being blessed with you three young ones every day," Sonichu replies. "Our little angels."

Robbie replies, "Yeah! We twy an keep you an Mama happee. YAY!"

"Yes y'all do," Sonichu replies, "on Christmas, as well as the other 364 days in your own cute ways; a smile, drawings, and the time we spend together as a family."

Robbie thinks on that for a moment, and he remembers his drawings of sailboats, Papa Sonichu winning a Wrestler's Belt in the match and the family gathered together. He also remembers the games of catching the football, running training around the yard, even High Velocity Bowling on the PlayStation 3 (with a custom-fitted Wii wrist-strap attached to the Dualshock 3 Controller (I.M.H.O., _ALL_ wireless controllers should be made with the accessory hole for the wrist straps).

After all that remembering, Robbie replies with a smile, "Yes, we do."

Meanwhile, in the Kitchen, Rosechu and Cera have almost finished baking all the cookies for the upcoming Christmas Party. Cera looks at some of the cookies and smells their goodness. Rosechu looks over her shoulder from the sink, almost empty of the dirty cooking tools that were to be cleaned, because most of them were already cleaned and washed, and tells Cera, "They smell really good, huh?"

Cera replies, "Yes, Mama. Dewicious," with a few crumbs hanging from her lips, because she ate one peanut butter cookie. The oven bell dings as the last batch of cookies are done. Rosechu washes her hands, dries them, then switches the oven off and opens the oven with an oven mitt on her right hand and pulls the tray of cookies out. The smell of warm gingerbread refills the air. Cera wipes off her mouth with a napkin from the table, and fetches a fresh, clean spatula from the clean countertop and hands it to Rosechu. The cookies are gently lifted from the tray then are stacked onto a clean plate to cool.

Cera exclaims, "Hey Mommy, I am wooking fowawd ta da Chwistmas pawtee. Tank you fow wetting us invite our fwiends fwom schoowl."

Rosechu replies, "That's okay, sweetie."

Cera continues, holding a cookie in a zip-loc bag, "I can't wait 'til den, wen I wiwl give Kevin dis cookee I made speshul just fow him. It's shaped wike a candewl, wif fwosting fow da wax an da fwame, since he towd me dat he was Jewish."

Rosechu replies, "Aw, that is really special. Kevin will really like it. What flavor is it?"

"It is a Vaniwwa cookee", replies Cera, "I decided ta keep it neutwal ta avoid wisks of awwergies fwom da other fwavowrs."

"Very Smart, Cera," says Rosechu with a smile, exchanging a high-five with Cera, who squeals an enthusiastic "YAY!" The two put all the cookies into multiple zip-loc bags to be saved for the party on the 21st.

Once the cookies were bagged and put away in the pantry, Rosechu turned to her daughter and dusted off her apron. "Thank you for your help, Cera, but I have to fix dinner now. You may go check with Robbie and Daddy and see what they're up to. Keep your cookie safe, sweetie."

"Tank you fow hawving me ta hewp you; I had fun," replied the little pink Rosey as she smiled and stared off into empty space at…something. "I wuv you."

Rosechu set about readying the various pots and pans she needed to cook dinner with, while Cera toddled off past the black-and-white cat clock on the wall and into the living room, with her bagged cookie still tucked under one armstub. As she entered, she noticed tiny white flakes falling past the window, illuminated against the dark blue evening sky by streetlights the candle cookie on a plate on the coffee table between a Wiimote and the TV's remote control, Cera glanced back toward the falling snow and made her way across the living room to the window. Standing on the tips of her stumpfeet, she leaned forward and pressed her face against the cold glass to watch the snowflakes coming down over CWCville.

"Oooh..." she breathed, and a circle of fog quickly formed on the glass around her harelip mouth.

"Hey sis, wats goin' on?" Robbie asked as he waddled in from the rec room.

"It's snowing!" squealed Cera, hopping up and down in excitement as she stared out the window.

"It's snowing?" Robbie had only seen snow once before – back when he was less than a year old. The excited Sonee nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to reach his sister.

"Yeah, Wobbie; take a wook."

"Wow!" exclaimed Robbie, and pressed his own face against the glass next to Cera's.

"Yeah!" Cera replied. The two children stood there, watching the snowfall in awe. Behind them, Sonichu and Rosechu observed them with silent pride and joy. Finally, Sonichu spoke.

"Look at our children, sweetbolt," he sighed to his wife. "Look at how much jow even a little snow can bring. This marks a good turn for the season."

"Yes," said Rosechu, and waited a few more seconds before she switched to a more important matter. "I heard on the radio that about 2 feet of snow is expected."

"Really?" Sonichu glanced at her in surprise. "Well, if we're snowed-in tomorrow, I'll dig us out. In any case, I'll head out to the supermarket for enough food to hunker down with for a few days."

"You should take the car to bring the food home in," Rosechu suggested.

"Okay," replied Sonichu, as if he would seriously ever try to carry 40 or 50 pounds of groceries back from the supermarket on foot. A few days' worth of food for their family would have fed a human family of five for three weeks, given the voracious appetites of Cera, Christine, and Robbie. But the Sonichu family _never_ had to worry about money – Father's tax exemption laws saw to it that no chu would ever go hungry in CWCville.

"Mommy, Daddy, I tink I've got Mawee's speech memowized," Christine cut in as she waddled up to Sonichu and Rosechu, grasping a slip of paper in her armstub. "I want ta weecite it wif one of you weading awong ta check me off wif. Wiwl you hewp me, pweeeeeeeeeease?"

"Well, Daddy's got to go to the store for food, but I'll help you, Christine," said Rosechu.

"Okay, tank you," the shiny Rosey replied.

"Good luck, Chrissy," added Sonichu with a wink, then turned to Rosechu. "I'll be back in a short while." As he left to start the car, Rosechu gathered Cera and Robbie together with her on the big sofa in the living room and readied the speech to make sure she recited it well. Meanwhile, Christine gave herself one last check-over in her little handheld mirror to make sure she was still the prettiest Rosey in the world and everyone would be able to see her stunning beauty. When she was done, she placed it down and readied herself for her big performance.

"I'm ready, Christine," said Rosechu, and held up the paper. "Go ahead."

Christine took a deep breath and began.***Mary's Song – Luke – 1:46.5-55* **"My sowl glowifies da Lo0wd an my spiwit weejoices in God my saviowr, fow He has been mindfuw of da humbwle state of His sewvant. Fwom now on, awl genewations wiwl cawl me bwessed, fow da mightee one has done gweat tings fow me – holwee is His name. His mewcee extends ta dose who feaw him, fwom jen-a-way-shun ta jen-a-way-shun. He has pewfowmed mighty deeds wif his awm; he has scattewed dose who awe pwowd in dere inmowst toughts. He has bwought down wulers fwom dere thwones but has wifted up da humbwle. He has fiwwed da hungwee wif good tings but has sent da wich away emptee. He has hewped his sewveant Isweeal, wemembewing ta be mercifuw ta Abwaham an his dee-sen-dants fowever, even as He said ta owr fathewrs."

Rosechu smiled as Christine finished her recitation, while Robbie and Cera slapped their armstubs together and squealed "YAY!" simultaneously.

"You have recited perfectly, and you showed great emotion," she complimented. "Bravo.**"**

"I am tankfuwl an deewighted," replied Christine, and curtsied proudly. She'd been perfect! There was no way she wouldn't be anything less than the absolute greatest sensation of AnneWeston Elementary School's Christmas pageant now! If Mommy and her siblings had loved it so much, it meant that everyone else obviously would, too! Everyone loved her, because she was so pretty.

An hour later, Sonichu arrived home with all the food he'd collected at the supermarket."Hi, honey, I'm home, and I have lots of groceries," he announced as his wife opened the front door.

"I am happy for your safe return home," said Rosechu happily. She helped him unload the car…well, she did most of the work, anyway. Putting groceries away was women's work, after all. While she put the food away and continued cooking dinner, Sonichu chatted with Robbie and told him all about some dirty greedy jerks who'd tried to take the last cupcake in the bakery section. As the true and original creation of Christian Weston Chandler, he was, of course, entitled to whatever he wanted from the lower classes, so the sugary treat ended up in the family's grocery bag in the end. At the end of his story, Sonichu produced the cupcake from behind his back and handed it to Robbie, who immediately and greedily wolfed down the entire thing. After dinner and a bath for the chocolate frosting-covered Sonee, the family all headed off to bed…well, at least the children did. Once Rosechu was done washing and putting away all the dirty dishes, she and Sonichu headed for their bedroom for some much-needed BDSM.

The next morning, a thick layer of white had settled over 14 Brunchville Lane, and all the doors were blocked from the night's buildup of and Rosechu were up first, enjoying hot mugs of steaming coffee together at the dining room table while they listened to soothing holiday music on KCWC. The children were still asleep, no doubt dreaming precious little baby dreams.

"…_and that was Bing's 'White Christmas', and it looks like we will be sharing in on the wish greatly,"_ crackled the radio. The announcer wasn't Jamsta – it was still too early for him and Lolisa to be on. _"Here are the closings for the day, here on KCWC. All classes at CWCville University are canceled. AnneWeston Elementary is closed…"_

"Well, it looks like the children will be safe here all day today," said Sonichu as Rosechu sipped her coffee. She was wearing a red sleeveless top with a Christmas tree embroidered on the front.

"That is good," Rosechu replied. "After you've lowered the snow level a bit, we can build a snow family with hot cocoa and _A Charlie Brown Christmas_ after."

Sonichu smiled. "I'll enjoy that coca, and a warm shower as well." He took a sip from his mug and felt the drink instantly warm him up from the inside out. He felt the need to comment on it. "Hmmm…that's good, soothing coffee. Well, no sense putting it off; I'll go bundle up for work."

A few minutes later, Sonichu had dressed in his winter jacket and pants, complete with a Santa hat. He stood by the fireplace and placed his hands on his hips thoughtfully, examining the pile of snow that had fallen down the chimney.

"Well, only one way out, since the doors are blocked with snow," he said to no one in particular.

"Good mowning, Daddee!" cried Cera, Christine, and Robbie with eerie simultaneity as they waddled into the living room, all dressed in their adorable little pajamas.

"Good mornint!" replied Sonichu with a smile. "You're just in time to see me imitate Santa. Oh, it is a snow day; no school today." He crouched inside the fireplace, placed a finger on his nose just like Bert from _Mary Poppins_, and exclaimed "Chim-chim-cheroo!"

_Zoom!_ Sonichu shot up the chimney and burst forth onto the snow-covered roof, covered from head to toe in black soot. It had been a miracle that he managed to make it up without getting stuck. Who knew what could have happened? Shaking himself off, he slid down the roof and landed in a big pile of snow.

"Brrr!" he shivered, and promptly rolled himself into a supersonic speedball. Launching himself at the nearest snow bank, he obliterated it and moved on to the next, and the next, and the next, until the yard, the doors, the front walk, and the driveway were all clear of snow. It took him only five minutes.

_Bless his heart_, thought Rosechu later, as she walked into the bathroom where her husband was taking a hot shower. In her arms, she carried a white towel, embroidered elegantly with the words "Merry Christmas". As a dutiful wife, she was always ready to serve her husband's every need, even if it were something so insignificant as drying off.

* * *

"**The First Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Dunwich99**

**Saturday, December 13, 2008, west CWCville, Upper West District**

Cera squealed happily as she waddled about the CWCville streets alone, away from where the rest of the family was enjoying steaming mugs of cocoa with marshmallows in a nearby coffee shop. She just _had_ to learn more about Hannukah in order to impress Kevin, since he was her Jewish friend, after all. The candle cookie had been a good start…but what else could she do?

Across the street, her opportunity presented itself in the form of a family of three - a father wearing a sweater and glasses, a young boy with a heavy winter coat and scarf, and a young girl wearing an old and used pink _My Little Pony_ jacket - all exiting from a bakery, bags in hand. The girl coughed and sniffled, sick with a cold. The boy and man wore funny little cup hats on their heads, but the man had a little golden star necklace around his neck, same as the one Kevin had.

"Hey! Hey!" Cera shrieked at the family, waddling away from the short attentive view of her father. The trio froze in place in horror at the sight of one of the royal brats. If anything went wrong, if they upset her in the slightest, they would be executed on sight.

"Uh, yes?" the father answered with a forced grin. The children clutched their bags in fear.

Cera winked, puffing her pudgy body up smugly as she introduced herself. "I'm Cewah Wosey! My daddee's da twoo an owiginaw Sonichu an my mommee's da twoo an owiginaw Wosechu!"

The man gulped. "I'm Andrew Green. This is my son, Doug, and my daughter Jenny." The children eyed the larvae cautiously. Since so many innocent children had met their ends for being too close to the royal brats, many parents taught their children to fear and avoid them, at any cost. Andrew nodded and pushed his kids. "Now, if you'll excuse us, we need to go, Hannukah is tonight and-"

Cera's eyes lit up at this statement. "OOH! YAY! Hwannakwah! Dats wat my Jewish fwiend Kevin cewebwates, cuz he's a Jewish fowlk wike you! Tewl me mowe abowt Hwannakwah! I wanna impwess Kevin so he wiwl give me wots of nice pwesents at da Chwistmas pawtee!"

Andrew took a deep breath. This was getting bad. He knelt down next to the Rosey. "You see, Hannukah celebrates the freedom of the Jewish people from the tyranny of the Greeks, but also the…freedom our people have today…" The last part of his explanation felt hollow, since he was saying it in CWCville, right in front of one of the very creatures responsible for his entrapment.

Cera merely giggled. "Nuh-uh! Hwannakwah's wen da Jews wight dere candewls an eat candewl cookees! But no miwk, 'cuz Jewish fowk awe wactose intowewent. Dat's wat my mommee says. Whewe's youwr mommee? She shouwd hewp you buy foowd!"

The two kids looked from Cera to each other, shocked by the ignorance and anti-Semitism spewing from the pink mutant's harelip mouth. Andrew was tempted to crush the hideous little creature then and there, but doing so would place his children at risk. He hung his head solemnly.

"She's working at a Soup Hotel, taking care of some Nanny Program Sonees and Roseys and some fer…I mean, _poor homeless babies_," he replied, biting back his disgust. His wife, a former teacher, had been drafted as a nanny for orphaned larval chus. The ordeal had been driving her to the brink of depression, every morning leaving with dread, every night returning covered in filth and starving, all her food having been eaten by the greedy babies and her unable to do a thing.

"Tee-hee! I'm gwad my mommee an me don't hafta wowk! Wowk is too haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawd," Cera whined, further infuriating the defenseless man and his family toward the edge of insanity.

Doug stepped forward. "You…you don't understand, you-"

Andrew held a hand over his boy's mouth, silencing him lest they get struck down by the abomination's parents. "Um," he hurriedly continued. "As for the candles, you see, we light a menorah, because it symbolizes the time after our people freed themselves from the tyranny of the Greeks, and the _resistance_, the Macabees, had only enough oil for their menorah to last one night. But instead, it lasted eight."

Cera stared at him and blinked her freakish green lizard eyes. The concept was totally beyond her, and since she didn't understand it, she didn't care for it. "Dats siwwee! Chwistmas is betta 'cuz we cewebwate da biwf of owr Lo0wd! An den we get pwesents! YAY!"

"Hey! We have presents too!" The boy stepped forward, attempting to defend himself.

Cera blinked again. Usually when her mommy and daddy referred to Jewish folk, they'd say how they always liked to be greedy and keep all their fun toys and games to themselves, because they were so greedy. The concept of them being generous was alien to her…despite the fact that Cera had never given a single thing selflessly in her entire pitiful two year existence. Neither, for that matter, had anyone else in her family. Then an idea came to her…a brilliant, perfect, _smart_ idea.

"Dat means you hafta give me wots of Jewish pwesents, 'cuz it's Hwannakwah!" she squealed with shrill glee. "Den I can give dem ta Kevin an he'wl wuv me and give me mowe pwesents!"

Andrew sighed in defeat, and handed over a bag containing candles and gelt as Doug and Jenny glared angry red daggers at the blight against nature and life itself. Cera stress-sighed. "Dat's not enufffffff! Mommy and Daddy give me awl dere gifts, so you shouwd too, otherwise you'we gweedy!" Andrew handed the rest of his bags containing his family's gifts and groceries to the fuzzy little freak, while the eyes of his children sank in despair.

"YAY!" Cera declared, hugging the bags even though they were both twice her size. She looked to Jenny and Doug. "Oh! Oh! And I want dere jackets 'cuz dat jacket's pwetty, just wike me!"

It was almost too much for Andrew. "Please…those coats are all my kids have for the winter…"

Cera frowned and sighed, then squeezed her eyes shut and shrieked "DADDEEEEEEEE!" In a flash of yellow fur, Sonichu appeared in front of the family and snapped into a stupid looking battle stance, just as the kids ripped their jackets off and threw them to the fuzzy pink freak.

"What's going on Cera? Are these greedy JEWS trying to be greedy to you?"

Andrew gulped and swallowed his pride. "No….no…just showing some…Christmas cheer."

Sonichu smiled and patted Cera on the head, making her giggle more. "Way to go, Cera! Your new Jewish friends are really showing the true meaning of Christmas, ya know! Giving!"

"Can I please keep my jacket? That was my favorite…" Jenny sniffled.

"Now, that wouldn't be very giving now, would it?" Sonichu chortled, laughing with Cera as she helped her father gather up the poor family's former belongings. "Merry Christmas, Jewish folk!"

* * *

"**The Second Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Manajerkop**

**Sunday, December 14, 2008, excerpt from operative psychological evaluation report log**

**Interviewer: Wallace, Kathleen Subject: Ledger, Albert**

**Wallace: **Let's focus more on what you've been up to in your spare time, Al. Just name a hobby.

**Ledger:** See, that's the problem. I've become so obsessed with Hedgeclipper that I can't seem to stop thinking about it…about _her_. It's _her_, Kathleen. Those fucking eyes, that mirror, that-

**Wallace:** Calm down for a minute, Al. There are people out there who would sell their children for a chance to do what your squad's going to do to Sonichu's family. But this obsession with Christine Rosey…what do you think it all stems from? When did you start feeling this anger?

**Ledger:** *laughs* You mean apart than the first time I laid eyes on her smug little face?

**Wallace:** Correct. What exactly is it about Christine that drives your obsession?

**Ledger:** Three words. Narcissistic personality disorder. Only with her, it's not just a disorder, it _is_ her personality. And that's _it_. From what we've been seeing in our observations, it's just a bunch of mirror pretty mirror play mirror pretty Rosey. Mirror. She's in love with herself. A spoiled little baby is one thing, but a spoiled little baby who thinks she's some kind of unique and special princess messiah because her _fur_ is just a different color? She's _not_ a shiny!

**Wallace: **But we all know that. You saw the footage from August - Sandy Rosey was, and still is, the only known true shiny Electric Hedgehog Pokémon in existence. No wonder Chandler made Wild evolve her so fast…he didn't want Sandy taking away all of the attention from his precious little 'granddaughter'. And that's why everyone wants Christine dead as much as-

**Ledger:** No, no, you don't get it. When Hedgeclipper comes, I've got to be the one to take her apart. I'm going to be the one to break her down, to show her what a pretty Rosey she really is.

**Wallace:** And why is that?

**Ledger:** You ever get one of those…urges? As in, you felt you were meant for something bigger than anything you ever thought you'd go on to achieve? If this whole thing with Christine is, like you say, an obsession…well, I'm not sorry to say that I'm glad to have this obsession.

**Wallace:** Given your history of alcoholism, Ledger, this is setting off all sorts of warning bells.

**Ledger:** So…you're saying I'm addicted to the idea of torturing and killing Christine Rosey?

**Wallace:** What I'm _saying_ is that you need to take it slow. Let Morrison take out his own anger on some of those Roseys you keep bringing in from the abandoned zone. I spoke with Jexis just earlier this week – she says you've been staying up at night and painting their fur purple while they're still alive. God help us all if you move up to homebreds. For your own sake, Al, _lay off_.

**Ledger:** It's…it's just training. For Hedgeclipper. I want to make sure Christine goes through a-

**Wallace:** You're a Manajerk, Al. You're in charge of a Jerkop squad. You need to stay focused on the present, or all those fears you told me about Morrison are going to come true. You made him what he is, and now you're throwing him out in the cold.

**Ledger:** It's too late for that, Kathleen. Steve's gone too far past the point of control now. You weren't there…you didn't see what happened to him after Zoey died. August 9th tore something out of him that hasn't grown back yet, and I'm not sure I want to know where this is all going to lead. *pauses* I threw him out in the cold, and he just went ahead and became part of it himself.

**Wallace:** I'll be sure and bring up that point on Friday. Now tell me about Kevin Shaw, Al.

**Ledger:** *laughs bitterly* Where do I even begin?

* * *

"**The Third Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Manajerkop**

**Monday, December 15, 2008, west CWCville, AnneWeston Elementary School**

Mrs. Lyra Jansen's classroom, like so many of the others throughout AnneWeston Elementary, had been converted to accommodate a mixed-species group of students after the city board of directors and Mayor Chandler had deemed it compulsory for the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon of CWCville to receive their schooling in integrated classes for a "proper educational experience". Prior to the integration, the homebred Sonees and Roseys at AnneWeston had been confined to all of three rooms full of toys, candy, and TVs with _Mary Poppins_, fully segregated from the human boys and girls so the school's curriculum could continue uninterrupted. The children still had to put up with the hordes of chu larvae at lunch and recess, and for the most part, they begrudgingly tolerated their fuzzy, insipid, self-centered and infuriatingly smug "classmates".

But those days were now long gone.

Because the classroom had been placed under constant surveillance by the EHPF team assigned to protect the school, the poor embattled teacher had been forced to surreptitiously reassign the few human children left in her class to the six or seven desks directly in front of her own, so she could continue to instruct them. Beyond this cluster of actual education lay no-man's-land: another fifty-three tiny desks that were supposed to have held Sonees and Roseys. _Supposed_ to.

In the first days of their educational career, the larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon had quickly grown tired of having to put the slightest amount of effort into so much hard work, not to mention the fact that they all expected constant praise and rewards for literally doing nothing. Backed up by stern support from the EHPF guards, it didn't take too long for the babies to whine their way into a class period of constant free time, where they could wander around at will and do whatever their little cholesterol-clogged hearts desired. There was nothing that Lyra could do but comply and continue to give the larvae passing grades, lest she provoke the wrath of their parents.

On one hand, the separation of human and chu gave her many opportunities to help each of the boys and girls in her class with their schoolwork, and teach them valuable life lessons while the horde of baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon played and giggled and waddled around the room.

On the other hand, her career as a teacher had now become a living hell with the addition of Cera Rosey, Christine Rosey, and Robbie Sonee.

"…an den I'm gonna give him dis cookee I made, an he's gonna be sooooo happee 'cuz _I_ made it fow him an itsa cookee in da shape of a candewl 'cuz Kevin's one of da Jewish fowk," Cera babbled incessantly in her shrill twee voice to no one in particular. "Gwampa Chwis says da Jewish fowk awe mean 'cuz wun of dem twied ta ban him fwom da Game Pwace, but he tauwt dat bad twoll a wesson wen he came back fwom vacayshun an destwoyed da nasty Jewkops…"

"Cera," Lyra stated firmly, glancing at the door and the CCTV camera fixed on her desk to remind herself that she was being watched. Otherwise, her attitude toward the Sonichu children would have been much, much more different…not to mention, far more unforgiving of their despicably spoiled, abysmally insensitive behavior towards both her and their human classmates.

There was no response from the little pink Rosey, only more twee-speak about things that only Cera could ever have cared about. Rolling her eyes, the teacher tried her best to shut out the shrill squeals of the baby chus playing around her classroom, and turned instead to her actual students.

"Did anyone finish their homework for today?" she asked sweetly, smiling at the forlorn little group of boys and girls that she knew were suffering just as much as she was. At least she could escape the incessant whining and babbling when the little demons waddled out for recess, but the human kids…those poor, poor kids…always being watched by EHPF guards to make sure they went out of their way to "share" their meager toys and lunches with the greedy larvae, always under the watchful eyes of the CCTV cameras, always cold, always hungry, always scared. If her own husband hadn't been employed as a janitor in AnneWeston Elementary as well, she would have most likely snapped and gone on a suicidal killing spree by now.

The human children obediently raised their hands, all desperately trying to ignore the fuzzy baby chus hugging and tugging at their legs and, in one girl's case, the hem of her skirt. Across the room, a Sonee had managed to climb up onto a bookshelf after several stressful tries, and was now mopping the sweat from its fur with the ripped pages of _Curious George_. Lyra knew that one of two outcomes would result from this. Either the idiotic baby would attempt to heroically jump down and thus give itself a concussion, or else it would give up, sit down, and start bawling at the top of its lungs until it either passed out or until the EHPF dashed in to punish Lyra for her unspeakable neglect of the poor, helpless little babies.

"Good job, everyone!" she complimented the children, and walked around the desks to collect the sheets of paper. She didn't even bother to ask the chu spawn. Homework and assignments were too stressful for them, and since the city board of directors had mandated nothing less than As for every Sonee and Rosey at AnneWeston Elementary, Lyra had to let their idiocy slide.

"Excuse me?"

Lyra turned toward the door to see a handsome, somewhat rugged-looking young man enter her classroom from the hallway. The newcomer wore a simple enough outfit – jeans and a black hooded sweatshirt – and appeared to have been in his early 20s, chronologically. All in all, he didn't seem too threatening, and was certainly a welcome sight after so much pink and yellow.

"Yes?" she asked, and gave him a polite smile. "Can I help you?"

"You're…Mrs. Jansen, right?" The young man returned the smile and held out a hand. "This is my first day working here…I'm your new TA. My name's Kevin Sh-"

"KEVIN! YAY! You evowved!"

Both Kevin and Lyra turned to see Cera waddling across the room as fast as her pathetic stumpy feet could carry her, stumbling and nearly tripping under her own unbalanced weight. With another shrill squeal of "YAY!" she fastened her armstubs around the Jerkop's leg and adhered herself with static cling, hugging on to Kevin like the world's fattest, ugliest, fuzziest leech.

"Do you two…know each other?" Lyra asked, barely suppressing the disgust in her voice.

"Of…_course_ I know her!" exclaimed Kevin, and hesitantly patted the gleeful Rosey on her soft headspikes. Glancing at the bewildered teacher as Cera snuggled her fat face against his leg, he flashed Lyra a single wink, then turned back to his new friend. "Who _doesn't_ know her? She's the true and honest Cera Rosey! You're such a good little Rosey, aren't you, Cera?"

"YEAH!" cried Cera with immense joy, and detached herself from the Jerkop. "I am happee 'cuz you'we gonna pway wif me an give me pwesents wike dose nice Jewish fowk dat Daddy an I got pwesents fwom! I wuv pwesents! YAY! Do you hawve a pwesent fow meeeeeeeeee?" She stared up at Kevin and looked him directly in the eyes, fixing the operative with a firm, expectant gaze.

"Yes, Cera!" Kevin replied. "I do!" _And you'll get it this February, you fuzzy little abomination._ Reaching into his pocket, he withdrew a plastic bag of chocolate candy and held it out to the ecstatic Rosey. "I picked it out just for you! It's called Cera Candy!"

"It's cawled Cewah Candee?" exclaimed the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon delightedly. "YAY! Dat's my name! I want da Cewah Candee! Gimme da candee NOW NOW NOW!"

"All right, if you say so!" The Jerkop placed the bag on the ground and stepped back as Cera struggled to open it with her fingerless armstubs. Turning to the stunned teacher, he grinned and leaned in toward her ear, then dropped his voice to a whisper. "Was there a Kevin in this class?"

"Yeah," muttered Lyra. "There was. Little Jewish kid, about eight or nine years old."

The two of them stood there in silence, disdainfully watching the greedy Rosey stuff her face with the immense bag of chocolate. Lost in her own world, Cera didn't even bother thanking Kevin for the treat. Why did she need to, after all? She had earned the Cera Candy for being such a responsible Rosey and reminding her friend Kevin that Jewish folk were supposed to give her presents, because it was Christmas! The season of giving!

"Dat Cewah Candee was tastee!" Cera yelled, and waddled over to Kevin's leg again and wiped her chocolate-smeared harelips on his jeans. "Wet's pway a game! I wanna pway dowlhowse!" She tugged at his pants relentlessly, her mouth curled into a smug smile. "I wanna pway NOW!"

"Okay, Cera, let's go play dollhouse," Kevin replied. "Why don't you go get your brother and sister, too! We can play with them, too!"

"Ohhhhhhkaaaaaaaayyyyyyy…" the Rosey sighed impatiently, and waddled off toward the back of the room where her sister Christine was alternating between looking at her little mirror and adjusting her soft headspikes. On her first day with the Sonichu children in her class, Lyra had thought the purple baby chu would be relatively low-maintenance. She seemed content to just not pay attention to anything around her and stare into her mirror or any other reflective surface she could find. But it wasn't enough for her. Christine demanded attention, and thus, she would constantly ask Lyra and the human children, "Do you tink ima pwetty Wosey?" The exchange would always end with the narcissistic infant smirking, explaining that she was a shiny, and that she was the most special and important Rosey ever to walk the earth. To Lyra, it was madness.

Beside the purple Rosey, Robbie Sonee was waddling back and forth to show off the new pair of blue boots that Rosechu had bought for him at the Shopping Center over the weekend. In reality, they were just plain normal-sized plastic sneakers, but the little Sonee had stubbornly refused to accept any evidence to the contrary. Worse, he had brought both pairs of shoes and insisted upon switching sets so that he could waddle around in the snow at recess, which meant that Lyra had to constantly help him in and out of the same pair of the same shoes every single damned day. And since Robbie wasn't even housebroken, this led to an 'accident' nine times out of ten.

"I don't know what you're trying to achieve with this," she muttered to Kevin. "I thought I could handle them on my first day here." She shuddered. "Be prepared, Kevin. Be prepared."

"Don't worry," replied Kevin, and surreptitiously passed her a small maple leaf that had been painted red. "We've been waiting for an opportunity like this for far too long, Mrs. Jansen."

"Can we pway now?" whined Cera, her pudgy face twisted in an annoyed frown as she waddled back up to the Jerkop and began beating her armstubs against his shin. "I wanna pwaaaaaaaaay!"

Kevin knelt and picked her up in both hands, feeling the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's fat beneath the touch of his fingers as he heaved the 25-pound fuzzy blob off the floor. For a single second, Sonichu's smug face flashed through his mind, and he imagined himself squeezing the insipid abomination's torso, tighter and tighter until Cera's ribs splintered and her insides burst out of her mouth and her little body ruptured and crunched like…

"Wat awe you doing?" a whiny, irritatingly shrill voice asked.

Snapping out of his daydream, Kevin looked down to see Robbie and Christine staring up at him. With a playful smile, he placed Cera down between the two baby chus and sat on the floor in front of the Sonichu children, then dragged over a dollhouse for the pink Rosey to play with.

"Do you tink ima pwetty Wosey?" asked Christine, waddling up to the Jerkop and fluffing her headspikes. "I'm da Viwgin Mawee in da pway at schoowl! Dat's my stowee, an I'm sticking-"

"You're playing the Virgin Mary?" Kevin asked with mock astonishment.

"Yeah!" the purple Rosey replied with a smug smile, and crossed her stubs as she stared at the operative through a pair of crystal-blue eyes. "You shouwd know dat by now!"

Kevin bit back the urge to punch the wretched infant in her fat face. "When exactly _is_ this play?"

* * *

"**The Fourth Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Marsmar**

**Tuesday, December 16, 2008, west CWCville, AnneWeston Elementary School**

" During the time of Caesar Augustus," a young boy announced as the lights dimmed and the curtains drew back from the stage to reveal a cardboard manger and a painted backdrop, "in a simple manger, our lord and savior Jesus Christ was born to Joseph and Mary…"

"Dat's me!" squealed Christine, hopping up and down on her stumpfeet with glee and waving an armstub at the audience of humans and chus. "I'm da Viwgin Mawee, an dat's my stowee!"

"He was born in Bethlehem," continued the narrator, irritated by the shrill interruption. "This is the story surrounding his birth." He hurried off the stage as quickly as he could, just as a trio of boys dressed as the three wise men entered from the other side.

"Look at the star up there!" the first one cried, pointing to a large painted star on the backdrop.

"It's right over Bethlehem!" added the second boy in an awestruck voice.

"Wen is it my tuwn?" Christine let out a loud stress-sigh, interrupting the actors once again.

The three wise men hesitated briefly before the first boy continued reciting his lines. "That must be where the King of Kings will be born!"

"We must take these gifts to him!" said the third one in a hurried voice. The children hurried across the stage, passing Christine, who had been standing up front in the spotlight the entire time. She hadn't delivered a single actual line yet, but the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon in the audience were cheering and applauding her every word and action nonetheless. Puffing herself up with pride and accomplishment, the Rosey waddled back and forth joyfully across the stage to even greater adoration from the adult and larval members of her species.

After what seemed like an eternity, another child appeared from stage right, dressed in flowing white robes, cardboard wings with real Pidgey feathers glued on, and a halo made from a glowstick and pipe cleaners.

"Mary, do not be afraid!" the angel announced. "I bring you good news!"

"Why wouwd I be scawed?" Christine asked confusedly.

"I-I bring you good news that will bring joy to the people," continued the boy, bravely holding his own against the Rosey's vacuous stupidity. "Today you will give birth to the savior of-"

"YAY!" squealed Christine, so shrilly that the poor child was forced to cover his ears to avoid being instantly deafened. "I'm gonna be da best mommee evuh, an my bay-bee will be da most adowable bay-bee EVUH! Evewywun wiwl wuv him and wanna give him Fuzzy-Wuzzies!"

"The child will be the Messiah and the Lord," mumbled the angel, giving up with a faint sigh. "This is a sign; your baby will be wrapped in cloth and-"

"Wat ewse wouwd he be wapped in?" asked the baby chu. "An why does da Wo0wd hafta be bown in a stabwle with ugwee fawm Pokémon? He shouwd be bown in a fancee howse 'cuz he's da GodBeawrJeesus!"

"Say your lines," the boy whispered, fighting to keep himself from delivering a harsher threat.

Christine smirked and plunged right into her memorized speech. "My sowl glowifies da Lo0wd an my spiwit weejoices in God my saviowr, fow He has been mindfuw of da humbwle state of His sewvant. Fwom now on, awl genewations wiwl cawl me bwessed, fow da mightee one has done gweat tings fow me – holwee is His name. His mewcee extends ta dose who feaw him, fwom jen-a-way-shun ta jen-a-way-shun. He has pewfowmed mighty deeds wif his awm; he has scattewed dose who awe pwowd in dere inmowst toughts. He has bwought down wulers fwom dere thwones but has wifted up da humbwle. He has fiwwed da hungwee wif good tings but has sent da wich away emptee. He has hewped his sewveant Isweeal, wemembewing ta be mercifuw ta Abwaham an his dee-sen-dants fowever, even as He said ta owr fathewrs."

Beaming with immense self-satisfaction, the purple Rosey waddled forward and performed a dramatic bow, which immediately ended when she lost her balance and toppled forward, saved from injury by her thick layer of baby fat. The hapless angel, now irritated and rushing his lines, simply continued on as Christine flopped around and tried to push herself back upright.

"All glory to the King of Kings!" he recited quickly. "Highest in Heaven and Earth, and peace to those He favors!"

"Wike pwetty Woseys!" added Christine with a smug smile, and waved to the crowd. Wasting no time, the angel beat a hasty retreat, and was replaced by one final actor, a boy playing Joseph. The Rosey kept waving and smiling as her family cheered from the audience, waving to Sonichu and Rosechu while Cera and Robbie smacked their armstubs together and Cera's Jewish friend politely clapped from the seat beside the Sonichu family. When nothing happened, Christine waddled around in a circle and attempted to perform a little dance, but without jointed legs or even any legs to begin with, the pathetic display ended up costing her her balance once again.

Another wave of cheering exploded from the crowd of pink and yellow Electric Hedgehog Pokémon as Christine stumbled back upright, dizzy and disheveled, but reveling in her victory. Just when the child playing Joseph could stand it no longer, a teacher rushed out onto the stage and placed a tiny doll into the Rosey's armstubs. To say that Christine had been unprepared for her 'role of a lifetime' was putting it mildly. In fact, all she had memorized was her speech.

"Wook, Joseph!" she squealed, and held up the prop infant. "An angewl gave me a widdle bay-bee! YAY!" When the doll didn't respond, she let out a stress-sigh and began shaking it up and down rapidly. "Why isn't he sayin anyting? Bay-bee Jeesus? Bay-bee Jeesus, say hewwo!"

"You're not supposed to shake it like that," whispered the boy playing Joseph.

"Don't tewl me wat ta do!" screamed the purple Rosey in a spontaneous fit of tard rage. "I'm da mommee an I want bay-bee Jeesus ta see evewywun, 'cuz he's a WEAL bay-bee Jeesus!"

The child gritted his teeth. "It's not real! It's a pr-"

Chrisine gasped and waddled a few steps back dramatically, then raised her armstub and pointed at her classmate. "JEESUS _IS_ WEAL, YOU TWOLL! MOMMEEEEE! WAAAAHHHHHH!"

"What in GodJesus's name is going on here?!" yelled Rosechu, dashing up onto the stage as her daughter bawled and wailed at a freakishly high volume for something as small and compact as a Rosey. She glared down at the stunned boy, placing a hand on her hip as she raised the other one and wagged a finger back and forth in a 'no-no' gesture. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you slander-spreading TROLL! How DARE you question the divine will of your GodJesus!"

"No! No, I…" the child stammered, trembling with fear as Rosechu raised her tailbolt as if to smack him in the face. "I said THAT Jesus isn't real!" He pointed to the prop. "It's a stage prop! She didn't even listen to me!"

"I DID TOO!" shrieked Christine. Her fat face was now turning an even deeper shade of purple. "You'we just a dang afeist! I HATE YOU, YOU DIWTY TWOLL!"

Rosechu let out a dramatic gasp. "Atheism? In AnneWeston Elementary? Drawing herself up to her somewhat-imposing height of five feet, she turned to face the enraged chu audience. "What kind of horrid ideals are our poor, innocent children being exposed to? We DEMAND the truth!" She pointed damningly at the little boy, who by now was shaking with fright, his face streaked with tears. "It is unhealthy, trollish influences like THESE who make this school unsafe for the good little Sonees and Roseys of CWCville!" The pink Electric Hedgehog Pokémon raised a fist in the air. "As it is my GodJesus-given duty as a mother and a housewife, I WILL NOT REST until these SLANDEROUS PRACTICES are removed from this school and destroyed for good!"

The chu audience broke out in thunderous applause, giving Rosechu a standing ovation while the few humans, with the exception of Kevin Shaw, sank down further and further into their chairs.

"Well said, heartsweet!" exclaimed Sonichu, and hurried onto the stage while Kevin placed Cera and Robbie up by Christine's side. By now, the terrified child had fled the scene, no doubt to spend the next few hours in a state of traumatic shock. "Now, as Father tells us, we must learn to forgive those wrong us, and enjoy some Christmas cheer!" He winked at no one in particular.

Kevin collapsed back into his seat as music began playing around the auditorium. The Sonichu family gathered together on the stage, with Sonichu and Rosechu in the back and Christine, Cera, and Robbie lined up at their feet. Raising a small digital camera, he snapped a portrait of the assembled family and smiled in satisfaction as the image appeared on the screen. Perfect.

Befriending Cera and her siblings had only been a start. Now, the path to Sonichu and Rosechu's trust lay ahead, and unless he was very much mistaken, the family would be inviting him along to many, _many_ more events in the future. But all he needed was one chance…a chance to enter 14 Brunchville Lane. If he could get in, the rest of Hedgeclipper would practically sort itself out.

"Siiiiiiiiiiiiiiie-went niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite!" sang the Sonichu children, their screechy twee voices drowning out any semblance of music that had once existed in the auditorium. "Hoolweeee niiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiite! AAAAWWWL IS CAAAAAAAWWM! AAAAWWWL IS BWIIIIGHT! WOUND DA VIIIIIWGEN MOMMMMMMEEEEE AN CHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIWD…"

_Two months._ Kevin closed his eyes and smiled, suppressing the pain in his head. _Two months._

* * *

"**The Fifth Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Assamite36**

**Wednesday, December 17, 2008, 9:50 a.m., staff room, CWCville Shopping Center**

_BANG! _Locker #12 slammed as its owner stowed his normal work uniform away, leaving him dressed in long underwear in preparation for his big role in the spotlight. Turning towards the countertop, Kurt Wyczawski took a long hard look at the fluffy red pile of clothes before him. Sighing, he unfurled it and started donning the pants.

"Hey there, jolly ol' Saint Nick!" called a voice from across the room, carried by the acoustics of metal and tile. Surprised and slightly caught off-guard, Kurt fastened his trousers and turned towards the source of the sound – a thin black man wearing a janitor's uniform.

"Ho ho ho, yourself!" he chuckled, trying to get into character. Good old Mitch was always in the mood for some friendly ribbing. Anyone who knew Kurt and his normal job at the mall knew that he was far from a jolly sort of fellow. "Still cleaning up Sonee shit, I see?"

"Aw, c'mon, Kurty-boy. That ain't no way fo' Santa ta talk! Lighten up once in a while, will ya?" Mitch scoffed as he gazed upon the Santa suit. "Boy, am I glad I never had ta do that."

The white man knew full well that it was his own body type that had landed him the role. The fact that the mall's rather pathetic food options had larded him up over the years didn't help, either. However, CWCville needed a fat man to play the Christmas season's most beloved figure, and so there he was, adjusting the fake beard provided by a costume shop. It was a welcome break from fixing broken lights and fountains, but he was still quite uneasy.

"It's not going to be that hard, is it?" Kurt asked. He was middle-aged and divorced, meaning he had extremely limited experience with children, much less his own estranged ones. Being ambivalent about this role was an understatement.

"Nah," Mitch continued. "Just act all...Santa-like. You remember what Santa's like, dontcha? All 'Ho ho ho, Merry Christmas, an' what do _you_ want, li'l boy or li'l girl...' Y'know, Santa!"

"I guess so," nodded the maintenance worker, buttoning up his coat. "Thanks."

"Any time, fat man!" Mitch let out a hearty laugh. "Now get on out there and break a leg!"

"Just remember," Kurt noted. "You're going to have to clean up after I'm done." Content with the last word, he put on his hat and left for the atrium.

**10:27 a.m., Atrium, CWCville Shopping Center**

An assortment of families took their place in line behind a velvet rope at the mall's Christmas display. The exhibit's centerpiece was a twelve-foot tall plastic tree covered in ball ornaments and tinsel, but that was not what they were there to see. Situated right next to the fake Douglas fir was a wooden chair furnished with bright red velvet, with exposed wooden parts painted in gold. It would soon be occupied by Santa Claus, who would then have children sit in his lap and make their holiday requests. Behind the throne was a festive arch, hiding a little booth covered by a red curtain. It was behind this curtain where Kurt sat, ready to spring forward on cue. The exhibit's attendants, dressed as elves, were scurrying around frantically, attempting to keep order before the big reveal.

Inside the booth, Kurt sat in a nondescript chair, fully decked out in the Santa outfit. Another member of the mall's staff stood right next to him, still dressed in his gray uniform.

"The cue's about to come soon, Kurt. 10:30 on the dot, and you're not gonna be Kurt anymore. You're gonna be Santa Claus. Now, you know the cue, right? And the line, too?"

"Yes and yes," affirmed Kurt, nodding with each answer. He had been given less than an hour to rehearse his parts, but they were simple enough to at least not butcher at the moment of truth.

"Good to know," the attendant remarked confidently.

As if on cue, the loudspeakers blared on, broadcasting a message that could even be heard from within the booth.

"_Ladies and Gentlemen, Girls and Boys, and Dudes of all Teenages, as well as Da Gals... welcome to a ring-ting-ting-a-ling Christmas at CWCville Mall!"_ Kurt recognized the voice as belonging to CWCville's only radio announcer, Jamsta. He could see his attendant cringe.

"_Now, this rootin'-tootin' celebration couldn't have been possible without the hard work of our Mayor, da one and only Christopher Christian 'Ricardo' Weston Chandler, who - by the way, ladies - is STILL girlfriend-free!"_ The line was expected to bring uproarious applause. It failed miserably. _"We've got all sorts of tinsel-y and winter-y celebration for every one of y'all out there, even the Jews and Buddhists! Now, without further adieu, da star of our show, da one and only... Kris Kringle, Father Christmas, Jolly Saint Nick, it's…SANTA CLAUS!"_

"Go! Get out there!" commanded the attendant. Kurt did not need a second encouragement. He burst out from behind the curtains, arms wide open in greeting.

"Ho ho ho! Merry Christmas, and good tidings to all!" Kurt bellowed out the words in his best Santa voice. He was pleasantly surprised at how comfortably he fit into the role. "Now, boys and girls, come sit down and ask Santa what you'd like for Christmas!" With that, he took his place on the plush throne, and patiently awaited the first child.

An "elf" unhooked the rope from its post, allowing the first family to come forward and make their requests. They were a mother and son, dressed in faded clothes too large for either of them. The boy, appearing about seven years old, stepped forward at the behest of his mother. He still looked uneasy.

Kurt felt it necessary to give the child a few words of encouragement. "Come on, don't be shy! What's your name, little boy?"

"Hey Santa…I'm William, but my mom and my friends all call me Billy."

"Ho ho ho, Billy! I like that name. Now why don't you come over here and tell me what you'd like?"

Comforted by Kurt's Santa voice, Billy went ahead and sat on his lap. Still, he hung his head low.

"Aww, why don't you show a little spirit? You've been a good boy this year, haven't you?"

"Yes, Santa... I try and try to be good, but no matter how hard I try…me, Mom, and Jenny are still stuck in that stupid Soup Hotel."

Upon hearing that, Kurt's heart sank. He knew very well of CWCville's immense homeless problem, but he had no idea of its impact on children until then. Still, he kept up the act.

"Chin up, Billy!" he said kindly. "It's never a good time to stop hoping for a miracle! I'm sure that things will turn out better for you and your family!" _And for all the rest of us._ "So what can Santa do for you? What kind of presents do _you_ want for Christmas?"

"Well... I'd like the whole _Harry Potter_ book collection." The fantasy novel series, beloved by so many around the world, was banned in CWCville due to the mayor's perception of it being a rival to Pokémon. Kurt was especially touched by the fact that the boy had sought out literature, instead of more material toys.

"Wonderful, Billy! I'll see to it that you get your collection." Of course, as a mere mall Santa, he had no power to do so, but the role called for making empty promises such as that one. "Anything else?"

"Well, Santa," Billy mused, "my sister Jenny couldn't make it today 'cause she's sick in the hospital. She'd like a hat to cover her head, 'cause she lost all her hair."

_The dreaded C-word_, thought Kurt. "Oh, I'll get her that and so much more! Let's all hope she gets better."

"Thanks, Santa," replied Billy, finally lifting his chin. "You're the greatest."

"Oh, ho ho ho! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you, Billy! Now before you leave, would you and your mommy like a picture?" Kurt inquired.

"Okay, Santa."

Having approval from the child, Kurt turned his head towards Billy's mother, who nodded in approval. He then turned towards the camera crew. "All right, my little helpers! You heard him!" The crew obeyed, getting into position as both Santa and child looked at the camera. A flash later, Kurt sent the boy on his way back to his mother.

The "elves" sent up the second family from behind the ropes, a family of four. They seemed to be in slightly better spirits, which was not saying much. Their appearance as a complete nuclear family of two parents and two children also assured the mall Santa. Without delay, Kurt invited both children, an eight year-old boy and a five year-old girl, to his side.

"Ho ho ho, little kids! Why don't you tell me your names?"

"I'm Shana," answered the girl with a bright smile.

"Toby," replied the boy, a tad blandly.

"Well, why don't you two come on over? There's room on my lap for both of you!" Actually, Kurt was not sure if he could bear the combined weight of two children. He merely wanted to expedite the process and serve both of them at once. Sure enough, their weight bore down on his thighs, though it was nothing harder than lifting heavy equipment.

"So, Shana, Toby," Kurt began, "have you two been good this year?"

"Yeah, Santa!" said Shana, still smiling. "Well, I was. I don't know about Toby, though." This elicited a glare from her older brother.

"I was SO!" Toby retorted, leaning towards his sister threateningly.

Kurt merely laughed at the sass and sibling rivalry. "Oh ho ho _HO_! Now now, settle down, you two! I'm sure you've _both_ been very good children. Now, why don't you tell Santa what you'd like for Christmas?"

"Let _me_ do it first," insisted Toby, still locked in rivalry mode. "Santa, I'm not gonna ask for much. I just want new shoes for all of us."

Kurt was puzzled why Toby chose such a bland request. Why only "new shoes"? Why not "a pair of Air Jordans", or "cleats"? Then he brought his attention to the children's feet, which answered his question. They were wearing worn out and torn up sneakers, discolored by presumably many years of use. Kurt was sure that Toby's were two sizes too small. Looking at their parents, Kurt could see that their feet were similarly adorned.

"Oh ho ho, we'll have to do something about that, now won't we?" Kurt punctuated his remark with a wink. He was unsure if dry humor like that was part of Santa's personality, but Toby seemed to appreciate it with a masked chuckle. "And you, Shana?"

"I wanna have a big dinner, with turkey, cranberry sauce, and yams, and pie, and..." As the girl counted off the dishes in her ideal banquet, Kurt noticed how skinny she was. Indeed, so was her brother. As a matter of fact, the whole family was emaciated, their condition hidden only by layers of wintry clothes. Par for the course in CWCville.

"... 'cause we didn't get to have Thanksgiving." At this point, Shana's face turned to disappointment, a stark contrast to her mood up until then. Kurt was likewise disheartened, but not in the least surprised. Shana then bounced right back into her previous cheery demeanor "So I want Christmas dinner to be double, to make up for it!"

"Aww... I'll tell you what," Kurt proposed. "Come with your family to your nearest Soup Hotel, and I'll provide you with all the turkey and pie you want!" _Worth a shot._

"But my daddy doesn't like the Soup Hotels," remarked Shana. To confirm this, Kurt looked past her towards her father, who only nodded profusely with a look of fear on his face. And who could blame him? The Soup Hotels were not only home to many unsavory types, but also infamously infested with feral chu larvae. _Poor bastard must be pouring all of his paycheck into rent,_ Kurt thought, under the assumption that the man actually had a job.

"Well... I guess I'll just have to drop a turkey dinner down the chimney, won't I?" Kurt jested, having surrendered all hope for helping the girl's family. Now, would you like a picture?"

**11:41 a.m, Atrium, CWCville Shopping Center**

".. and I want a model Jerkop Battle Bus, too!"

Such was the final request of the boy that was sitting on Kurt's lap at the moment. That caused the mall Santa to do a double take. It was true that the escapades of the PVCC squadron were renowned in the human community of CWCville, although to laud them as out in the open as the boy just did was still rather taboo under the watch of the police state. Still, he could not help but admire the boy's naïve bluntness.

Forcing out a chuckle, Kurt dismissed the request in an effort to diffuse attention. "Oh ho ho, silly boy! I'm sure that they don't make Battle Bus models!" Then, leaning into the boy's ear, he whispered, "But I'm sure I can get my elves to work on one."

"Really?!" asked the boy, his eyes wide with astonishment and hope. Kurt's response was only to wink and put a finger to his lips in the universal gesture requesting silence. Understanding the cue, the boy expressed his jubilation only to himself. Sending the boy off on his way after a complimentary photo, Kurt pondered on just how far he had come along. Within one hour, he had adjusted to the role of a mall Santa quite well. During this short period, he had met a fair amount of lower-class CWCville children, each with their own horror stories, as well as varyingly positive attitudes in spite of them. One of the children that she saw had lost her best friend to Chandler's "Nanny Program" in the past year. Recounting the loss brought her to tears, and Kurt could not help but offer some sniffles of his own. Sadly, he was completely powerless in granting her wish. He shuddered to think of what was being done to the kidnapped children, snatched in plain sight from the grips of loving parents, only to be replaced by diminutive pseudo-children.

Almost as if on cue, his thoughts were interrupted by a voice that was way too high-pitched for a human to tolerate.

"SANNA!"

Cringing, Kurt turned towards the source of the sound. In the distance, he saw a chu couple clad in Christmastime wear, overseeing their multicolored litter. One of the Roseys was bouncing up and down, hurriedly waving an armstub in his direction. The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon had finally arrived at the mall. Upon hearing the Rosey's shriek, many other larvae turned their heads towards Kurt with eerie simultaneity. Soon, the mall was filled with shrill exclamations vaguely resembling the name of the character that he was playing. The humans were all covering their ears, the aural assault too painful for them to stand. Even then, that was not the worst to come.

The squeaks were soon accompanied by the pitter-patter of baby recolors attempting to run towards the center of the mall. Naturally, their lack of coordination caused them to trip many times, sometimes over each other, but with some help from their parents, they were able to make their way to the Christmas display.

When chu clashed with human, nothing could look good for the latter. When the first plastic sneaker touched the red carpet, the hapless humans huddled together for safety. As was well known, although the infants were pathetic weaklings individually, they were deadly in large numbers. And although homebred Sonees and Roseys had none of the fighting instincts of their feral cousins, the humans were not taking any chances.

Soon, the swarm was all over the atrium, with all of the decorum expected of stampeding Electric Hedgehog Pokemon. One little girl found herself unable to bear the onslaught of the little monsters, and was pushed off-balance by a couple of Sonees; a costumed mall employee was able to rescue her quickly from a more grim fate. Placed among the festive decorations were a Hanukkah menorah and a gold statue of Budai (undoubtedly mistaken by Chandler for Buddha), both included by the mayor's administration as a token gesture to CWCville's religious minorities; they, too, received the amount of respect that was accorded to them when several of his "grandchildren" knocked them to the ground and trampled all over them. After all, why should an item belonging JEWS get in the way of Santa?

In the middle of the chaos, Kurt tried desperately to seek a solution. These were Sonees and Roseys raised in homes, and yet they were acting like ferals in the abandoned zone! Surely, something could be done to make them behave in that artificially sweet way of theirs.

Then it occurred to him.

"_**HO, HO, HO!"**_ he bellowed as loud as he could, trying to catch their attention. All of the larvae stopped in their tracks to hear what Santa had to say.

"Now, there's no need to rush there, little babies, is there? I promise each and every one of you that you'll get your presents! But _only_ if you behave and stand in line! You can make friends with those Sonees and Roseys next to you!"

That was enough for the homebreds. The dual prospects of getting presents and playing with friends got them to obey Santa's call. One by one, litter by litter, the toddlers stood in a neat queue, their parents catching up with them. As they bunched together, Kurt did a quick estimate of just how many were there. A stark contrast from when they were a mob, where they illusorily appeared voluminous, the infant chus probably numbered no more than fifty in reality.

_That's still way too damn many,_ remarked Kurt to himself.

The momentary orderliness of the chus gave the attendants ample opportunity to corral them behind a velvet rope. Just for good measure, they pulled out plastic rope and placed it at shin level. Unfortunately for those of the human species, they were unceremoniously shunted aside. Those who had been slated to have a session with Santa could only watch helplessly as the chus took their place in line. The scrunched look of misery on a little girl's face told Kurt everything.

As the elves struggled to keep the furballs behind the makeshift barrier, Kurt dreaded the moment that the first chu would come to sit on his lap. Still, knowing that the pseudo-children were bound to get restless, he girded his loins and made the first call.

"Ho ho ho, could the first family come up?"

Having vocal permission to come forth across the threshold, the litter took it as an entitlement to rush to Santa with wild abandon. One of the Sonees, a rather generic yellow one, managed to make his way all the way to the foot of Santa's throne before falling flat on his face, typical of his kind. Before Kurt knew it, armstubs were batting his boot-covered shins, their owners vainly attempting to climb up his lap.

"I wanna tewl Sanna wat I want fiwst!" bawled a pink Rosey, the largest of the bunch.

"No, I wanna! I got here fiwst!" retorted a slightly smaller Sonee, who in fact did not get there first.

Surely, Kurt was in for a treat. At long last, the brood was finally assisted up his lap by their parents, who did not even bother to do as little as make eye contact. Kurt rather preferred it that way, as the adult chus' mono-eyes unnerved him to no end. Suddenly, he felt a crushing weight on his thighs - odd, considering that there were only three of them: one Rosey and two Sonees. _Must weigh at least twenty-five pounds apiece,_ he thought. Accompanied by the heavy pressure was a screeching cry of "YAY!", the three larvae having finally accomplished their goal.

"OOF!" Kurt grunted reflexively. "You sure are getting big, kids, aren't you?"

Not understanding the subtext, the larger of the Sonees nodded enthusiastically in response. "Yuh-huh! An I'm gwowing so fast, wun day, I'wl be as fast an stwong as Daddy!" It was a rather expected response of his species.

"Nuh-uh!" his brother, the one that tripped so cluse to Kurt's ankles, fired back. "I'm gonna be da fast wun fiwst!" Amidst this fraternal war of words, Kurt glanced up at the Sonees' father, who could only look on with a smile of fatherly pride. Keeping his reaction to himself, Kurt looked back down and tried to do the most diplomatic thing he could - reward neither of them.

Turning towards their sister, who had been fidgeting and whimpering all along, he asked, "So, little girl, what's your-"

"I wanna Bawbie Jeep, a new dowlhowse fow my dowlwey Soozy, an a Easy-Bayke Ovwen, an da whowe cowwekshun of My Widdwe..." Before Kurt could even ask her name, let alone whether or not she has behaved over the past year, the Rosey fired off her litany of a Christmas list. Overwhelmed, the mall Santa could only sit back and pretend to listen, playing his part well.

"...an da new WiddweBigPwanit wif awl da downwoad wevewls an costumes an stuff!"

"My, my, that's quite a lot to ask for Santa, isn't it?" Once again, the hidden meaning of Kurt's rhetorical question was too implicit for their primitive minds to grasp.

"Yup! An' I wan' dem AWL in a biiiiig bawx wif wed wapping paypew an' a gowld bow!"

Kurt merely gave a token acknowledgement to her oddly specific demands about packaging, before moving on to the brother at her left.

"MY TUWN!" yelled the other brother, too selfish to bother with patience. "I wanna wayce-cawr fwom Matchbawx, wif a Dewuxe Twack, an da new Indiana Jownes Wego Pwayset-"

"No, _I _wanna new Indiana Jownes Wego Pwayset!" the other Sonee butted in.

Kurt quickly spout out the first diplomatic response he could think of in order to defuse the fomenting dispute. "Okay, you can BOTH have the playset, ho ho ho!" _And have your tax-leeching dad pay for them._

"YAY!" the two shrieked in unison, their conflict resolved for the moment. The interrupted Sonee proceeded with the rest of his list, but to Kurt, it all seemed like a blur of gender-appropriate toys. When he finished after Arceus knew how long, the last of the babies started his list immediately without prompting from the mall Santa. As before, Kurt found himself tuning out most of the list, hearing only bits and pieces such as "twain" and "Powew Waynja".

"...an a shuvewl fow da sanbawx, too!" Thus concluded the Christmas lists of the first chu family... out of scores more. Kurt prayed to Arceus for the strength to endure all of them.

"Ho ho ho! That's a pretty nice list for kind little Sonees and a kind little Rosey like you," Kurt lied, "but how am I going to send all these wonderful little presents if I don't know your names?" Truth be told, he was not interested in knowing them at all, but he felt that he had to offer this token gesture, lest the brood's parents disapprove.

The Rosey took the initiative to answer on behalf of them all. "My nayme is Annie Wosey, an I'm da owdest," she announced smugly, thumping her rotund gut with an armstub. "An dis is Buwt Sonee an Petey Sonee," she continued, gesturing to them both. "An we wiv on Fowty-Fouw Frankwin Stweet; dat's da bwoo howse, so get it wite!" The Rosey, whose name Kurt did not even bother to remember, recounted her address speedily, wanting to ensure that Santa would not err on this delivery of utmost importance. "Now, PICSHUWE!"

_FINALLY, it's gonna be over,_ Kurt sighed, unnoticed by the imps on his lap. The brats turned their heads towards the camera simultaneously, flashing their trademark wide-eyed stare and visibly creeping out the cameraman.

"Say cheese," uttered the operator, not even looking at his subjects. A flash later, the furballs leapt off of Kurt's lap joyously with a final "YAY!" as they joined their parents to have some more family-oriented fun throughout the rest of the mall.

Meanwhile, Kurt inhaled a deep breath of relief as blood rushed back to his pained lap. Massaging his thighs with gloved hands, he managed to clean off a not insignificant amount of pink and yellow hairs, molted by the larvae that had just left. Shuddering in disgust, he looked up towards the next batch. The attendant had given up on keeping them behind the ropes, going ahead and sending them forth without warning.

_Here goes..._

**12:04 p.m., Atrium, CWCville Shopping Center**

".. an I wanna Staw Waws Cwone Waws Cwone Twanspowt Ship, wif fifty cwones inside!"

With that, the last of five in a brood had finished his Christmas list. This litter was not only the most demanding, but also collectively the heaviest. Being unable to fit fully into Kurt's lap, the obese furballs had migrated towards his gut, restricting his breathing.

"Oh -_huff_- okay, boys and girls! -_gasp_- I'll ask my elves what to do. Now can you let Santa -_oof_- have some room to breathe?"

"NO WAY! Sanna, we wanna picshuwe fiwst!" demanded the middle larva, a Rosey.

_Christ on a cracker._

The attendant obediently snapped his camera. The resulting image showed that Santa was not exactly in the mood to be there. In fact, upon examination of the photos taken since the arrival of the chus, Kurt appeared increasingly depressed. After eight families, the last photo depicted a torture victim in a red suit and a fake beard.

"YAY!" The larvae leapt off his lap, the Roseys opening their skirtachutes on the way down. As soon as they went into the air off his body, Kurt inhaled a deep gulp of sorely-needed oxygen, kicking his legs in sheer relief. Normally, it would not be expected of Santa to act so undignified, but he had lost his dignity long ago to the first batch of baby recolors. Working the blood flow back to his lap, he peered ahead at the next batch to which he would become victim. _Good, there's only three of them,_ he thought, certainly nothing as monumental as listening to the demands of five Sonees and Roseys. Then he took a closer look.

_Oh no..._ One Sonee, wearing nothing but standard-issue blue shoes, was flanked by two Roseys: One the normal pink... and the other, a shade of purple found in cheap marker boxes. The latter was staring straight into a small hand mirror, a telltale sign of what Kurt was looking at. _Oh no, oh no, oh no no no..._ He attempted to deny it, but the fact of the matter was that he was going to encounter the First Family of Electric Hedgehog Pokémon very soon.

As soon as Kurt's eyes hit the pink Rosey, he was met with a wide-eyed glare that was, at the same time, both staring off into space and directed straight at him. True, it was the trademark stare of all hedgehog larvae, but for some reason it was much creepier coming out of this one. The Rosey continued to stare at the mall Santa, as if awaiting some kind of response. His only response was to break eye contact and look nervous. Kurt redirected his eyesight upwards to meet the babies' guardian - a short-haired Latina of stocky build, wearing a magenta sweatshirt and loose grey sweatpants. _Lady's got the hardest job in the world,_ he thought. She had to look after the brats 24/7, while he hopefully only had to deal with them for five minutes at most. That gave him an assuring sense of perspective.

Any assurance was wiped away as soon as the attendant unhooked the ankle-height rope, while mouthing _Arceus help you_ towards Kurt. With a predictable unison cry of "YAY!", the gaudy-colored spawn waddled towards Santa's throne at a steady pace. That was, except for the Sonee, who began to accelerate two steps into his journey, falling flat on his face not even two steps afterwards. Righting himself with shocking ease, the Sonee resumed his journey, attempting to catch up with and eventually outrun his sisters. Naturally, he resumed his routine of run, trip, fall, get up, and run again. Obviously, he had never been taught the fable of the Tortoise and the Hare. Eventually, after what seemed like an eternity to Kurt, all three hoglets reached their destination. The Sonee, which Kurt presumed to be Robbie, was batting feverishly at his shins - not in an attempt to climb, but in order to demand something of Santa. The pink Rosey, which Kurt deduced was Cera, was the first to speak, vocalizing her brother's wishes for him.

"Wet us up, Sanna!" she screeched, bouncing up and down. The purple Rosey, who was the notorious Christine, merely stood there silently as she stared right back at her hand mirror. It was patently obvious that not one of these babies was going to give an ounce of effort to achieve their goal, preferring instead to wait for an adult to help them. This suited Kurt just fine, as he did not want to waste any of his strength handling the larvae, although he wondered how long this standoff would last.

Adult help eventually did arrive in the form of the nanny coming up and lifting them all in one fell swoop, a feat to which she was obviously no stranger. Kurt wanted to protest, but realizing her daily situation stopped him from doing so. Thus, he resigned himself to allowing her to place the babies onto his lap. The three shrieked their victory cry of "YAY!", then proceeded to bounce up and down, putting potentially injurious torture upon his femurs.

"Ho ho ho, little children! What are your names?" Kurt asked in character, immediately regretting it afterwards.

"You shouwd know us by now!" Cera squealed. "I'm Cewa Wosey, an dis is Chwistine Wosey!"

"An' I'm Wobbie Sonee!" the Sonee burst out, raising his armstubs in joy. Kurt felt something warm trickling down his leg, accompanied by an acrid odor. The spot on his costume around where Robbie was sitting began to turn dark, confirming his fears. It took every fiber of his being not to go ballistic on the un-housebroken turd.

The last of the Sonichu children had yet to speak, preferring to keep her glassy blue eyes locked on her reflection. Without prompting, she turned her gaze towards Santa, asking the question that was obviously on everyone's mind. "Do you tink ima pwetty Wosey?"

Urban legend had it that no human who heard that utterance had escaped with his or her sanity. Kurt was determined not to make himself proof of that. "Ho, ho, ho! Of course I do, Christine!" The lie was blatant to all who were not Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. However, for the Rosey, it was all the confirmation that she needed. After all, Santa had visited Roseys all over the world, and only she alone had the distinction of being called pretty - the prettiest one of all.

"It's 'cuz ima SHINY Wosey!" she stated in knowing glee. Kurt, however, knew otherwise. He had seen several purple Roseys during his tenure as Santa, and not one of them claimed that they were "shiny". Having a parent colored purple probably helped in that regard.

Picking up where his sister had left off, Robbie continued, "Owr daddy is da owiginaw Sawnichoo, an he's da fastewst ting in da wowld! Wun day, I'wl be as fass as Daddy, even dough I twip a wot." Robbie's harelipped grin turned into a frown in order to punctuate that statement, as if the complete stranger behind the Santa suit could even give two shits about it.

"Ho, ho! Of course you'll be as fast as him - maybe faster!" Kurt lied. He found that he could say the words with a straight face by thinking of the stunted baby as an actual Olympic track star.

Robbie continued, "So did is wat I wan' fow Chwissmas, Sanna!" Kurt was partially thankful that this was moving along. "I want wotsa candee in my stawking, and maybe da noo Wii Owympic gayme wif Unca Sawnic. OOH! An' I wan' da big Wegow Poweece Stayshun Set, wike I wote in my wetter!" The last statement baffled the mall Santa, who wondered if the toddler could even read at all. As Robbie's face contorted into one of deep thought, a task too Sisyphean for his stunted brain, Kurt genuinely felt surprise at how brief the list was.

Before he could turn to the next crotchfruit of Rosechu's, though, he was preempted by Robbie, who was apparently done with all that thinking. "OOH! An I want Ewebits fow da Nintendow DS, an' Animaw Cwossing fow da Nintendow Wii, wif da Wii Speek, an' sum noo wunnin shoos, cuz my owd wuns awe getting bwoken an' diwtee. Noo shoos! YAY!" Robbie stretched his harelip mouth so wide that its shape was soon reminiscent of several types of Klingon ceremonial blades. Kurt took a cursory glance at Robbie's feet, and sure enough, his plastic shoes had not the slightest indication of wear or dirt.

"Okay, now what do YOU want?" he growled at Cera, quite uncharacteristic of Santa. His veneer of patience was quickly decaying, and he was doing whatever he could to end it quickly.

"Sanna, I wan' sum cookee cuttews wif da howiday shaypes, an a wollwing pin. An I wanna fwying pan, 'cuz ima big giwl now." The Rosey stopped then and there, making Kurt wonder if she would continue with an outlandishly long list of domestic implements. When she did not, he shrugged and moved on to the last of Sonichu's brood.

Christine was still marveling at how stunningly beautiful she was, so Kurt repeatedly calling her to attention had failed to move her at all. Only after the mall Santa literally prodded her did she break out of her trance and snap back to reality. She turned to face Santa, who was at long last putting her at the center of attention.

"And what would you like for Christmas?" Kurt had a strong feeling what it was going to be.

"I want wotsa pwetty dwesses; sum spawkwee, a bwoo wun an a wed wun an a pink wun, an a puwple wun wike my shiny fuw, an pwetty bows ta attach dem! An I want da Pwetty Puwfect Pwincess maykeup kit, wif big eyewashes, an pwus I wanna no-fowg maykeup miwwor fow da bafwoom, an a miwwor fow da fwunt doow, an a miwwor fow da kitchin, an a miwwor fow my dowl howse, an ten mowe miwwors ta cawwy awownd..."

Listening to that list caused something to snap within the beleaguered maintenance worker. However, it simply was not within his personality to explode. Instead, he gathered his composure and vented in a manner consistent with his character.

"Ho, ho, ho! Those are many _many_ presents! I'm not sure if my workshop elves can handle such a load!" Kurt chortled, and the three fuzzballs only looked at him, wide-eyed with horror.

"Anyway," he continued quickly. "Those kinds of presents are for _good_ children." He proceeded to ask what he had never dared to ask any other chu. "So…have you been good this year?"

"Wat?" asked Robbie, a confused look on his face. Where had this crazy question come from?

"Well, I have a list of _all_ the good and bad little children in the world," Kurt expounded, being as dramatic as he could manage, "and I have to find out who's been a nice child, or a naughty child. "Children who are kind to their friends and respectful of their elders get lots and lots of presents! But..." His brow furrowed to emphasize his counterpoint. "Children who never do nice favors for their friends, or are mean to them, or talk back to their parents and never do what they say-"

"Dose awe twolls!" interjected Cera with a frown, shaking her armstub at the unseen enemy.

Kurt's eye twitched slightly, just imperceptibly. "They are _naughty _children, and they don't get presents. All they get is a lump of coal in their stocking. So... have you been naughty or nice?"

Even a wicked child with a modicum of wit would have answered "nice". However, the idea of rewarding moral behavior was absolutely foreign to the spoiled-rotten baby chus, whose parents simply gave them what they wanted whenever they asked. Mommy and Daddy and Grandpa gave them presents because they were three wonderful little angels who blessed the lives of the world with their every word and action. So why wouldn't Santa? The concept of a benevolent figure who sought something in exchange for gifts gave them too much Prickly-Wicklies to bear.

"W…W…W…WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" The trio of larvae did what they could only do in that kind of situation, and in that moment, Kurt just then realized how bad the consequences of his little act of rebellion could get. Tears flowed down (and cartoonishly outward) from their reptilian eyes as they screamed their overpowered lungs out in an aural caricature of how babies actually cry. Kurt considered retracting his statement and apologizing, but by then it was too late.

"What the heavy metal rock band?!" A voice familiar to all the residents of CWCville rang out. The opposite of "YAY!" had reached the original copyrighted Sonichu's elongated ears, and within a split second he had arrived on the scene, carrying his wife in his arms. As his spawn continued to bawl, Sonichu looked sternly at the mall Santa. "What did you do to my kids?!"

Kurt had a feeling that this would not end well, but nonetheless he answered nonchalantly, reverting to his own voice, "Well, I was simply teaching them how Santa works -"

"You're giving him STRESS, that's what." As Rosechu dismounted, simply nodding with an angry expression, Sonichu leaned forward and put his hands on his hips in a vaguely feminine pose. He continued, "And NO ONE gives my little angels stress! The Mexican HOMO learned that long ago!" He firmly pointed a finger at the caretaker from before, who simply shook her head and muttered inaudible Spanish curses.

Sonichu continued to give Kurt the lecture of his life. "You're a danged dirty TROLL who must be stopped; the consequences will never be the same! I'm getting Father!"

"Yeah!" Rosechu assented with a single word. With that, her husband shot off towards the Mayor's office in a dash of yellow. She then bent over to collect her hatchlings, offering them words of consolation.

"Aww, don't cry, my little babies! Mommy's here!" She pulled each child off of Kurt's lap and placed them on the ground. As Kurt tended to his legs, she cooed, "Don't y'all worry; Daddy's getting Grandpa, and soon he'll take care of everything!" Forgetting the emotional strain that they just underwent, the three flipped their happy/sad switches and shrieked another piercing "YAY!" as their shattered Heart Levels were instantly restored to 100%. The confirmation of her children's happiness gave their mother a chance to direct her attention to the man in the red suit.

"Just you wait, 'Santa'!" she cried dramatically. "My hubby-bolt will be back soon with Father, and soon you will understand the full might of their Electric Hedgehog power!"

It had occurred to Kurt that the threat of reprisal was more than genuine, but he still wondered about the severity of his punishment. After all, summary executions were commonplace in this dystopic metropolis. Would the mayor be cruel enough to end his life on the spot, in front of all those children and homebred larvae? Like all beings aware of their mortality, Kurt's breath shortened and his heart accelerated.

Just then, two blurs, one yellow and the other blue, dashed into his field of view. They skidded to a halt, and Kurt realized that Sonichu came back with a recolored version of himself. The latter pressed the white patch of fur on his chest shaped like his own head, and in a flash an obese man in thick glasses and a striped shirt materialized.

"There he is, Father!" Sonichu shouted, pointing an accusing finger straight at Kurt. "That's the dang troll Santa Claus who made my little partner and my little princess and Cera so stressed!"

"What in tha name of God an' tha Bear do ya think you are doing?" The voice that emerged was agitated, nasal, and high-pitched - the Mayor's "angry voice", known by all who had heard his periodical Captain's Logs, wherein he often railed against the innumerable enemies of the state.

"Mr. Mayor, if you'd let me explain…"

"Mister Mall Santa Fred Brinkley," the Mayor addressed Kurt, extremely sure that 'Fred Brinkley' was his employee's name and nothing less, "Do…d'ya know what you were task, uh, what you were made ta do? You have a VERY important role as tha Santa for CWCville Mall."

_No shit,_ thought Kurt. "Mayor, my name is K-"

"I was not…I was not finished SPEECHING!" snapped Chandler. "You, Fred, you are a Mall Santa. And as y'all know, ALL Mall Santas play an imp…have a role in tha Christmas miracle of tha REAL Santa in tha North Pole! So, uh, dey all have a sike-ick link, with tha hub starting from tha North Pole, and linking ta different places. And CWCville is hap…proudly on tha East Coast, Virginia, sike-ik server!" The Mayor flashed a thumbs-up, directed at his mixed audience. Kurt quickly took the opportunity to examine his surroundings. All around, the chu species were loudly applauding their creator, while the humans stared, dumbfounded. Even the larvae were cheering shrilly, blissfully unaware that their red-suited saint had just been exposed as a fake.

The Mayor's victory speech continued. "An' it is tha every- tha job of EVERY man on dis link to, uh, hear tha wishes an' lists, to re- uh, send dem sike-ick-ally over tha network ta Santa Claus. 'Cause Santa can't hear ALL tha wishes of tha ten billion children roun' tha world, so he trusts Mall Santas ta do dat job."

The Mayor's hand formed into his trademark threatening claw. "But YOU, Fred Brinkley, you... you _VI_-YO-LAY-TED dat trust. You were CRUEL, and UNHELPFUL, to tha kids, ta Sonichu's kids, MY GRANDKIDS, an' now dere Chrissmas wishes won't get heard by tha Real Santa. Dat is a CRIME, and you wi- you shall now suffer!"

_Here it comes. _Kurt shut his eyes and gritted his teeth, preparing to accept his final fate.

"As, as tha Mayor of CWCville an' owner of dis fine essablishment, I hereby BANISH you from CWCville Mall, never ta step inside again! YOU'RE FIRED!" The Mayor pointed his finger straight at Kurt in a passable imitation of a certain business mogul.

_I'm done for- wait, WHAT?!_ Kurt was expecting never to open his eyes again, but there was a Christmas miracle, and he got off with a lighter sentence. Still, Chandler banning someone from the grounds of the mall seemed a bit odd to Kurt for some reason.

"So..." Chandler concluded on a lighter mood, "pack, uh, pack your stuff in a box... an' clear your cubicle by tomorrow. Y'all have a safe day an' stay STRAIGHT! Peace!"

"I don't work from a cubicle, Mister Mayor," Kurt stated sternly, gazing directly into Chandler's creepily-staring eyes as he ripped off his beard and hat and hurled them away in disgust. This did not register as an insult to the Mayor, so he did not feel that it warranted a harsher sentence.

As Kurt stomped off in his soiled red suit, it finally dawned on the Sonees and Roseys that Santa was no longer there. The beginnings of a collective mass wail were brewing, and the Mayor, knowing the emotional gauge of his creations despite his mental blocks and ignorant nature, quickly tried to preempt it. "Don'cha worry, Sonees and Roseys! I'm da Grandpa Mayor of dis here mall, and if Santa ain't gonna help y'all get y'all's presents, den I'LL get 'em fer y'all!"

At this, the "YAY!" to end all "YAY!"s exploded from the larval audience.

Kurt strolled through the throng of human families as this was going on. There would be no cries of joy for these children. The only way for their wishes to be fulfilled was for the Mayor to think about anything but his insipid creations. Truth be told, he was a bit glad to be away from a place where the chus constantly prowled…but this was his place of employment, and the only thing keeping him from falling into poverty, just like so many of the children he'd served as Santa.

_Guess it's the Soup Hotel for me after all,_ he thought with regret, and stepped out into the street.

* * *

"**The Sixth Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Manajerkop**

**Thursday, December 18, 2008**

There is _NO_ Day Six.

* * *

"**The Seventh Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Manajerkop**

**Friday, December 19, 2008,** **excerpt from operative psychological evaluation report log**

**Interviewer: Wallace, Kathleen Subject: Morrison, Steven**

**Wallace:** Let's go slowly. I want you to relax. Take a deep breath, and don't shut me out again.

**Morrison:** Right. ***inhales, then exhales*** What do you want to go over this time?

**Wallace:** It's been four months, Steve. Every time I bring it up, you change the subject. You're going to need to face it eventually, or else it's going to rip you apart from the inside. ***pauses*** I want you to tell me…about Zoey.

**Morrison:** ***silence***

**Wallace: **She was your best friend, Steve. I know she loved you, and she wouldn't want you to-

**Morrison:** Shut up.

**Wallace:** Excuse me?

**Morrison: **I said, shut up. I'm done. Let me out of here.

**Wallace:** You're not leaving this room, Steve. Not until we solve your problem.

**Morrison:** ***sighs*** I'm going to be completely honest with you, ma'am. I don't care if you say I can't leave. It's meaningless. Just words floating out there that you think are gonna control me.

**Wallace:** I can't control you. Jason or Clyde or Vivian can't control you. And not even Al seems to be able to control you. And do you know why that is, Steve? Because you embraced _chaos_.

**Morrison:** I'm not going to deny it.

**Wallace:** What I want to know is…_why?_ Why do this to yourself? Why distance yourself from who you were? The original Steve Morrison? Is this other Steve Morrison really that important?

**Morrison:** So, it's multiple personality disorder now?

**Wallace:** I didn't say that. What I'm saying is that you're lapsing into Manajerkop more often.

**Morrison:** I don't _lapse_ into it. I _am_ Manajerkop. I've _always_ been Manajerkop.

**Wallace:** Not always, Steve. Not always. For a while, this chaotic side of you only manifested in an emotional trigger. For some people, this gets triggered by drugs, alcohol, sex, trauma, and so on. But you…it's the killing. Killing and torturing Sonees and Roseys brings out Manajerkop. And I think I know what started all of this. It was your squadmate. The…the wild girl.

**Morrison:** Kuri. Her name's Kuri.

**Wallace:** _I don't care._ I never want to talk to her or even _look_ at her again after what she did last session. What I _do _want to talk about is Kevin Shaw, mostly because I'm seeing some parallels between you and him in terms of survivor's guilt. How has he been coping with Matt's death?

**Morrison:** I don't know. The only times I've ever talked to him recently are debriefing periods about his spy operation. Ever since Hogwash, he spends nearly all of his free time reading the _Sonichu_ comic and studying essays on the original Sonichu. He's not speaking to anyone much anymore, not even Allie. Hell, I don't think the two of them have fucked yet. And whenever he _does_ end up displaying emotions, they're nothing but anger. Like me. ***laughs*** He learned well.

**Wallace:** But what was the _point_ of it all, Steve? All this anger, all this chaos, all this hatred and violence and indifference? What did Ledger achieve by all this? What did _you_ achieve by it?

**Morrison: *laughs coldly* **Combat effectiveness, ma'am. Al couldn't shake his soldier side, so he took me and forged me into a cold-hearted killing machine. I just passed everything he taught me on to Kevin. It's a cycle. It's always been a cycle. And in the end…we all became Honey Badgers. And Honey Badgers don't care.

* * *

"**The Eighth Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by TatsuNoKoori**

**Saturday, December 20, 2008, west CWCville, subdivisions, 12 Brunchville Lane**

Heather Iglesias gazed out through the windows of her small house, staring at her "employer's" residence with utter hatred. Day in and day out, it was all the same for the nanny…listening to tales of her employer's escapades throughout the city, watching over the bastard children of said employer, and trying her best to avoid being sent away for negligence and locked up in a straight camp. She knew such horrible places existed, through the few friends that she could still contact.

Early in 2006, the young Latina woman had joined the PVCC, but due to of her lack of combat skill, she had been relegated to work as an underground agent. However, in the fall of that same year, the EHPF had outed her - not only as a rebel spy, but also as a hidden lesbian. She'd been offered one of two choices in her punishment: direct execution, or a life of service for Sonichu and Rosechu's offspring. Heather had taken the second option, on the grounds that at the time, there was only one heir to the Sonichu dynasty, Cera Rosey (then called "Cerah").

But as she had quickly learned, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon never made just one.

"Ratas maldito…" she muttered under her breath, her words drenched in vicious abhorrence.

She thought back to the days before the occupation, back when she used to babysit for some of the families that once lived in the now-chu-infested houses. She remembered how much she had looked forward to helping her neighbors care for their children whenever they were busy with housework, paperwork, or their jobs. She missed the sheer happiness that her charges radiated with whenever they saw her…how she loved telling them stories about her adventures outside of CWCville…seeing their faces light up when she showed them exotic treasures from her travels, and watching them gaze at her with amazement as she wove tales about the places she'd visited.

But those days were long behind her now. Heather bitterly fought back the urge to cry as she was torn from her wistful daydream and plunged into harsh reality. Her charges were now the three babbling abominations that Sonichu and Rosechu had spawned together, and the human children she had used to baby-sit were now either in Soup Hotels, straight camps, or Feeding Day pits.

She remembered, as tears began to flow down her cheeks, that several years had passed since the devastating fire that had engulfed the home of three of her most beloved charges. Heather often wondered if there had been any survivors that day, or if anyone other than the EHPF had cared about the fire. And it wasn't as if the chus had even cared about the humans in that house, but rather about a single baby Sonee, whose mutilated and charred little body had been found inside.

Heather rubbed her eyes, trying to rid herself of the bitter emotions. Thankfully, the little beasts were all next door in that horrid ill-painted house. She didn't have to show much restraint in her sorrow, but the fear of being spotted by the psychic eye-in-the-sky kept her in near constant fear.

_"…to save us all from Satan's power when we were gone astray…"  
_  
Heather glanced up, surprised, as what sounded like a very small group of people approached, all singing "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen". Hesitantly, she hurried to the door and opened it.

Outside, in the biting cold of a December night, stood a trio of heavily bundled people – two men and a woman, all of whom were holding little caroling cards. On the backs of the cards, a small but very familiar red half-maple leaf had been printed. The PVCC emblem. The last symbol of humanity that remained in this forsaken city…even after the deaths of so many innocents. They looked as if they had been walking for a long time, and it was evident in their voices that they needed both warmth and shelter.

Before any chu saw them, she ushered them into her house. Gratefully, the young operatives set about removing their heavy coats and stomping the snow off their boots, while Heather fetched a tray with mugs of hot chocolate and apple cider from the kitchen. Walking back into the living room, she realized that one of the Jerkops was sitting by her chair in the living room, pulling off her boots and other snow gear. She was about to ask the operative to shake off the rest of the snow before sitting down, but the words caught in her throat when the woman removed her hood.

For a moment, Heather believed she must have been hallucinating. The Jerkop bore an uncanny resemblance to one of her past charges, right down to her oddly-parted, milk-chocolate hair.

"Señorita?" she asked tentatively. The girl couldn't possibly be _her_. Not unless…

"Si, Señora?" the Jerkop answered involuntarily, and something seemed to click inside her. She looked up, and an expression of pure shock spread across her face. "Heather?"

The tray slipped from Heather's shaking hands, smashing to bits on the floor. "Kuri?"

The Jerkop trembled, and tears began to flow from her beautiful blue eyes. Without warning, she leapt from the chair and hurled herself at her old babysitter, wrapping her arms around Heather and crying with unrestrained joy and bitter sorrow. "YOU'RE…YOU'RE ALIVE!"

"KURI!" sobbed Heather, and embraced the young woman as tightly as she could. The last time she had seen her former charge was back in 1996, when she had taken the picture of the Tatsuno family and little Kuri had departed Kanto aboard the S.S. Anne. But this was not the same bubbly girl that had departed so long ago. It was almost as if… No. She couldn't assume that yet. As much as she dreaded her former charge's answer, she had to ask. She just had to know.

"What…what do you mean, 'alive'?" she asked softly.

The Jerkop looked up at Heather, her eyes red and puffy, but filled with an unfathomable depth of anguish…like a child who had lost everything dear to her. All that she could manage to get out was some partially intelligible sentence…something that contained the word 'family'.

"Kuri," continued Heather, dreading the outcome, "please tell me wha-"

"THEY'RE ALL DEAD!" Kuri cried, her face twisted into a dark reversal of the innocent child she had once been. "EVERYONE! DAIKI! ANN! NAOKI! MILLIE! ALL KILLED BY THAT FUCKER CHANDLER!" Weeping, the Jerkop collapsed to the floor in a fit of agonized sobs.

Heather could only stand there, horrified, frozen with hopeless anguish. "All…all of them?"

Kuri nodded hard and squeezed her eyes shut, unable to form words as she shook with grief.

Without a sound, Heather knelt down and hugged the young Jerkop close as they cried together, struck silent by the sheer gravity of the situation. Endless questions about what had happened to the Tatsuno family buzzed furiously in her head, but every one of them didn't seem to want to be answered. At least, all but one of them.

"...Como?" she asked nervously, accidently slipping into her native tongue out of the apparent senselessness of the loss her friend had suffered. It was really the only thing that she could ask.

"Operation Nanny."

Heather looked up to see a tall, blond-haired Jerkop with a patch on his right eye quietly standing on the other side of her chair, his gaze fixed upon the sobbing Kuri. The nanny didn't know how long the young man had been watching their reunion, but it didn't seem as if he'd been there for more than a few moments. Silently, he sank into a chair as his operative continued to grieve.

"Chandler's administration had been working on that damned program since the early days of the occupation," the blond Jerkop explained softly, "under a title they referred to as the Alpha stages. What it entailed…" He cleared his voice, perhaps in an attempt to keep from wavering. "It meant forcing families to house ferals in their residences, essentially putting the hosts under the strictest form of house arrest. The families couldn't leave for any reason, not even for food. The only way out…" He glanced away, as if holding back some immense anger. "A body bag."

A deep wave of sickness crashed through Heather's entire body. She had known about Operation Nanny's disturbing nature from her days as an info-runner, but to know that the chus had gone to that barbaric extreme, and that the Tatsunos had met their end in such a cruel manner...

"And Kuri…found them?" she cautiously inquired, fearing what the inevitable answer would be.

The Jerkop nodded, and Heather's heart nearly shattered then and there. To think that such a young girl had witnessed such horror...to think that _anyone_ had ever gone through anything like what Kuri had endured. And from the darkest depths of her mind, a dim ember, a spark that once had nearly been extinguished by years of playing nanny to the royal chu brats, was suddenly rekindled into a bonfire of blazing hatred.

The will of Heather Iglesias had been born anew.

"This can't go on," she snarled, determination burning bright in her eyes. "People dying and suffering for a mob of Puta Chu's bastard spawn..." She leapt to her feet furiously. "IT CAN'T!"

The young man didn't even flinch at her exclamation, but merely smiled grimly.

"That's why we came to you, Ms. Iglesias," he said firmly. "Ever since Cera, Christine, and Robbie were born, they've become living symbols of the chus' succession. Their very existence threatens to keep the hopes of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon alive, motivating them into far more dangerous prospects. We've been planning to bring an ultimatum to the chus…a message to show them that we're done being their slaves." His eyes narrowed. "And we want the message to rock them to the _core_." He motioned to the third operative, a young man with brown hair and a thin scar across his cheek. "Kevin?"

"Hello, Ms. Iglesias," the Jerkop said. "Kevin Shaw. This is our squad leader, Steve Morrison."

"Ah. Buenas noches, Señor Shaw." She stepped forward and shook Kevin's hand, but something still puzzled her. She turned to the blond Jerkop. "But Señor, what do I have to do with this?"

Steve grinned. "It's simple. Over the past few days, Kevin's been in contact with Cera Rosey and the rest of the Sonichu family. They've invited him to their Christmas party tomorrow, and he's going to be there, celebrating the holidays with the Chaotic Combo and all their friends." He leaned in close to the Latina, and a sinister glint shone in his good eye. "And while he's there, we're going to be right here, next door. Watching. Waiting. Studying. Preparing."

"For what?" Heather asked quietly, even though she already knew the answer.

The icy blue eye narrowed. "Judgment Day."

Heather exhaled and closed her eyes. "Muy bien. _Muy bien_, Señor Morrison." She turned her attention to the young girl, whose sobbing had softened slightly. "Kuri? Mí corazón, look at me."

Kuri sniffled and rubbed her eyes, now sporting a very tear-stained and reddened face. "Yeah?"

Heather gently stroked her friend's hair, smiling gently. "I will help you and your friends get into the Sonichu house. They took so much from us all...to allow them to live to see another sunrise would be nothing short of traitorous." She leaned closer to Kuri, frowning slightly. "And I swear upon the golden hooves of Arceus, that while I couldn't save your family…I will be there when you make Sonichu's family pay for what they did to us. I will be there, mí corazón."

With that, the two of them embraced again. Kuri smiled happily, overcome with joy. For the first time in years, the cold darkness in her heart had lifted, leaving nothing but innocence and peace.

When her day of vengeance came, it would be all the sweeter with Heather Iglesias at her side.

* * *

"**The Ninth Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Manajerkop**

**Sunday, December 21, 2008, west CWCville, subdivisions, 14 Brunchville Lane**

_Ding-dong!_

Kevin stepped back from the door and quickly adjusted his hair, as if preparing for a big date. He was fairly sure that he looked reasonably well-groomed already, but a little extra caution never hurt. Making a good first impression with the overlords of CWCville was the easy part. In fact, the actual "party" part was the easy part – just mingling and making small talk and trying not to give away anything that might blow his cover. The hard part was still to come.

_Hope I brought enough,_ he thought, glancing over his shoulder at his heavy backpack.

The door swung open, and Kevin knew that it was now or never.

"Oh…hi," Rosechu addressed the Jerkop with disinterest. She was wearing her standard holiday outfit – a red sleeveless shirt with a Christmas tree on the front and a tiny green skirt that barely reached past her panties. She glanced at the large mincemeat pie that Kevin was holding. "We did not order a pie, thank you very much, mister deliveryman. Merry C-Mas and stay straight!"

"Mrs. Rosechu," Kevin replied quickly. "It's me, remember? Kevin? Cera's friend from school?"

"Oh! The Jewish boy!" The female Electric Hedgehog Pokémon smiled forcibly and accepted the pie. "Of course, we are highly tolerant of every form of religious practice; as you know! Won't you come in? Cera is in the living room with our other guests; she will be very happy to see you are here!" Rosechu stepped back to let Kevin inside, then abruptly paused as she noticed the little pink ball of fluff peeking out from behind the Jerkop's leg. "Awww! What an adorable little Rosey you are!"

"_HI DERE!"_ SUZI waddled up to the pink chu's leg and hugged it, nuzzling the red and blue plastic boot. _"I'm Soozee Wosey an dis is my Nanny Kevin! Awe you da owiginaw Wosechu?"_

"Yes, it is true," Rosechu answered, beaming with pride at the LIESA unit's carefully calculated question. "I am the True and Original Rosechu; copyright 2000 by Christian Weston Chandler."

"Suzy's been so excited to come to your party," added Kevin, and picked up SUZI. "She really wants to meet little Robbie, too! She had a dream about him last night, as a matter of fact!"

"Oh, GodJesus!" exclaimed Rosechu, surprised. "Well, Suzy will have to make the first move, then! Robbie is _very_ stressed from that dirty troll Decepti-Clone Rosey's HOMO ATTACK!"

SUZI smiled and hugged Kevin's arm. _"I wanna meet Wobbie Sonee! Can we go pway now?"_

"Sure you can!" the Jerkop replied with false enthusiasm, and stepped into 14 Brunchville Lane. Hanging his winter coat on a wall hook, he straightened up and took a good long look at his surroundings. To say the house was an architectural embarrassment would have been far too kind. A kindergartener could have designed a better floor plan. From the main hallway, he could see into the rec room and the kitchen, while a single bathroom jutted out from the left wall next to the kitchen door. As he kicked the snow off his boots, Rosechu walked past him serenely and into the kitchen, where a purple Sonichu with blue ears and a yellow Rosechu with headphones over her ears were conversing with a small teenage Rosechu with wings and a firefly's tail.

Taking a deep breath, Kevin placed the LIESA on the floor. "SUZI, get a full interior scan and come back here as soon as you're done. Let the Badgers know that we're starting our sweep."

"_Okey-dokey!"_ replied SUZI, and waddled into the living room. Kevin could hear her gleefully introducing herself to the partygoers, followed by their reactionary exclamations of adoration. _At least she's having fun. Now comes the hard part – not trying to kill any of these furry fuckers._

The Jerkop walked into the kitchen, silently noting the dull mixture of browns and whites that made up the décor of Rosechu's workplace. The housewifely chu, though, seemed content to be in such a drab, oppressively confining role, for she had busied herself with rolling out a sheet of sugar cookie dough on the counter and stirring a large pot of Brunswick stew with her prehensile tail, both at the same time. It was obvious that she'd grown so accustomed to her-

_Brunswick stew?_

"Oh my God! KEVIN!" shouted an unnervingly familiar voice. "KEVIN! YOU'RE ALIVE!"

_Oh Arceus, no,_ thought Kevin as cold sweat spread across his forehead._ Not now. Not her._

A teenage girl slammed into him out of nowhere and hugged him as hard as she could, the Poké Balls on her belt pressing against his waist and her blue baseball cap whacking him painfully in the collarbone as she squeezed him with all her might.

"I haven't seen you in _forever!_" Kel cried in joy, finally releasing her cousin after a few more intensely awkward moments. She glanced down at his belt, noting the two Poké Balls hanging there. "Oh wow! You're a Pokémon trainer too, like me! What've you got so far?"

"An…an Arbok," Kevin answered truthfully, glancing up as Zapina, Jamsta, and Lolisa stared at them. "I caught him back in 2004. His name's…Frank."

"Wow! Cool!" exclaimed Kel in an unnatural, overly saccharine voice. This definitely wasn't the bright, spirited girl he'd once known. Something had happened to her in the years since the chu occupation, and Kevin had no doubt that her love for Rosechu had led to her eventual corruption. "I've still got all my Pokémon, except Rosey, of course! She's with Sonichu now, you know! They got married March 17, 2006 : ) and had three children; Cera Rosey, Christine Rosey, and Robbie Sonee!" The words sounded rehearsed, artificial, programmed. The spark of energy that had once existed in Kel's heart was long gone, replaced by everything Chandler wanted in a girl. It had been Kel who had helped ended Evan Christopher George's life…Kel who had so gleefully partaken in the torture, humiliation, and butchery of the Asperpedia Four…Kel, who had willingly betrayed her own species out of her staunch loyalty to her precious Rosechu.

This girl was not Kel Felix. The Kel he remembered as his cousin had died a long time ago.

The Jerkop forced a smile. "That's fantastic, Kel! I know Cera from AnneWeston Elementary – I work as a teacher's assistant in her class! She invited me to the Christmas party, so here I am!"

"Great! Let me introduce you to my friends!" chirped the girl in a voice that was far too cheery. She grabbed Kevin's hand and pulled him over to meet the Rosechu with insect wings. "This is Zapina Rosechu! She goes to Boleyn High School with me! Zapina, this is my cousin Kevin!"

"Hi, Kevin!" Zapina greeted him rapidly, zipping into the air and doing a flip. "Merry C-Mas!"

"Merry…C-Mas, Zapina," replied Kevin, forcing himself to use the horrid term Chandler had come up with to make the holiday "his own". At least it wasn't "CWC-mas". "How are you?"

"14 years cute and going on 15!" squealed Zapina, and winked. Kevin nearly vomited. "Kel's been telling me _all_ about her new boyfriend! They're Sweethearts from the Ground-Up!"

"Yes, it's true," sighed Kel. "Nait and I are meant to be together _forever!_" She turned to the other two Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. "And this is Jamsta Sonichu and Lolisa Rosechu! You should know them by now – they run the KCWC radio station and play _all_ the biggest hits, every day!"

"Dang straight, Kel-El!" Jamsta announced, and Kevin was forced to physically restrain himself from lunging for the knife holder on the counter. The purple Sonichu chuckled at his own joke, then looked over at Kevin. "Nice to have ya on board for da biggest, snowiest, festiviest C-Mas party in da _house_, GodJesus, Mary, and BRO-seph!" He laughed again. "Peace out, home-bre!"

Kevin couldn't help but wonder what Patrick Ryan would do in his situation…that _didn't_ involve him immediately punching Jamsta Sonichu's teeth out of the back of his spiky discolored head.

"And I'm Lolisa Rosechu!" Lolisa added – her standard rehearsed line for KCWC. That was it.

"Come on, Kevin! I've got _so_ many friends to show you!" Kel dragged Kevin out of the kitchen and toward the living room, where Punchy Sonichu, Bubbles Rosechu, Blake Sonichu, Darkbind Sonichu, Blazebob Sonichu, Chloe Rosechu, and Bionic the Hedgehog were gathered around the television, watching a special holiday announcement from Chandler on FQX News.

"_I, uh, apologize in advance for tha un-Christmasey or udderwise offending portions…offensive statements in dis message," _the Mayor stated, _"an' I wish y'all a merry Christmas and such. Anyway, how dare you pe-you certain individuals continue to spread lies and mistruths about me and my Original Electric Hedgehog Pokémon? Don't act like y'all don't know what I'm talkin' about, because I am not so much a manchild as y'all seem ta think I am! Tha Sonichus an' Rosechus are not thieves. Dey're GOOD CHRISTIANS LIKE THA REST OF US, an' tha Bible says dat "thou shall not steal", SO THEY DON'T STEAL!. Don't y'all try an' lie you dang atheist trolls, because you WILL be judged by God and Jesus and they WILL send you to Hewl unless you respect tha spirit of tha holidays an' repent for your trollin' stupid sins! Y'know who tha real thieves are? Dose dang trolls from tha Asperpedia, dat's who! And look at what happened ta_-_" _There was a sudden jump cut, and a shadow that could only have been Anna McLerran could briefly be glimpsed leaving the room._ "Right, sent them ta live with tha Amish an' stuff."_

"Everybody!" Kel announced to the crowd of chus as she pulled Kevin into the living room. On TV, Chandler was in the middle of a long pause, searching for something to say. "This is my cousin Kevin! He's a Pokémon trainer like me, and he's gonna be Cera Rosey's best friend!"

"_And anudder thing,"_ Chandler continued, carrying on while Kel introduced Kevin to the chus. _"I'd just like to announce that I will not be available for anything tonight, as I will personally be attending tha Original Sonichu and Rosechu's Christmas celebration. I just KNOW you WEAK COWARDS are gonna try ta ruin dere Christmas because you're jealous of how fortunate dey are-insteada tryin', why don't y'all just KILL YOURSELVES? Hmmmm? Hmmmmm? Yeah, y'all should just go ahead an' do dat, 'cuz ain't nobody gettin' into dat house without permission from its rightful owners and designer, an' lemme tell ya, not ONE of y'all is gonna get past US!"_

Down in the basement, SUZI spun in a circle and quickly recorded a digital map of the entire room with the specialized sensors implanted in her nose, then fired her skirt repulsors and jetted up the stairs, back into the kitchen. There was still one last room to search, and if her calculations were right, that was exactly where she would find her primary objective. And she couldn't wait.

Waddling through the kitchen and into the main hallway, the LIESA unit giggled to herself and did a little 'happy dance' that would have been impossible for a real Rosey. Everyone absolutely adored her…every chu, anyway. She had made sure to avoid Kel and Rocky Shoemaker, though BILLY MAYS, being an undercover PVCC agent, had immediately picked up on what was going on and played right along, even giving her a little ball of Mighty Putty as a Christmas present to play with. SUZI had stored the adhesive in her head…she had her own plans for it.

Grabbing the "baby knob" attached to Robbie's bedroom door, she pulled open the tiny larva-sized flap and waddled inside. Toys, games, action figures, and three dozen pairs of discarded blue plastic shoes lay strewn about the ugly yellow room, while a large bed with battery-blue and yellow lightning bolt patterned blankets sat on the right side against the wall. The Sonee himself was nowhere to be seen, but SUZI's analysis pointed to two possible locations: food or Daddy.

Jetting onto the bed for a better vantage point, she scanned the room. It wouldn't work well for Hedgeclipper as a staging point, so she simply categorized it as **Low Potential** and hopped back down. Her task was done. Now she just had to find out where the naïve little Sonee was hiding.

"…an I hewped Daddee put da stawckings up AWL BY MYSEWF!" a screechy, whiny voice sounded from the warm rec room. "An Sanna's gonna fiww dem awl up wif candee an pwesents fow me an Cewah an Chwistine, but Mommee an Daddee don' need pwesents 'cuz dey got US!"

Making sure her eye-screens were still flipped to their green Rosey Mimic setting, SUZI toddled towards the high-pitched noise. Sure enough, the tiny fat yellow blob had managed to climb all the way on top of the buffet table, and was currently in the process of eating his way out of a red velvet cake three times his size that he'd also eaten his way into. Around the room, Cera Rosey and Christine Rosey were playing patty-cake on the floor while helping themselves to a giant bowl of red and green M&Ms and little plastic cups of CWCnog, the sickeningly rich version of eggnog that Chandler had ordered his CWC-Cola factory to produce for the holidays. Wild Sonichu and his daughter Sandy were conversing with Angelica Rosechu, and towards the back of the room, BILLY MAYS and a miserable-looking Heather Iglesias were discussing the recent election of the American politician, Barack Obama. Back at the buffet, Robbie finally emerged from the cake, covered from ears to sneakers in cream cheese frosting, and continued to brag to Kevin about his increasing speed and all the adventures he was going to go on when he evolved. Beside them, Sonichu stood eating a Christmas cookie and gazing at his son with immense pride.

"_HI DERE!"_ SUZI shouted loudly, startling Robbie and causing him to slip on his own frosting.

"OOF! WAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" wailed the Sonee as he toppled off the table and dropped like a stone, slamming into the hardwood floor with a soft _whump_. His considerable baby fat absorbed most of the damage, but Robbie continued screaming until his father picked him up and offered him a peppermint, which he quickly grabbed in his little armstubs and began sucking on.

"What kind of nanny do you think you are, mister?" Sonichu snapped, cradling the tiny Sonee in his arms as Robbie sniffled and sucked on his peppermint. "Y'all know you're supposed ta catch Sonees if they fall from high places! Roseys can use their skirts as parachutes, but Sonees are full of spunk and speed. Plus, they don't wear skirts unless they're HOMOS!" He puffed himself up with smug pride. "And as you should know, NO Electric Hedgehog Pokémon is a dirty HOMO!"

"But…" The Jerkop stopped himself before he could point out the fact that Sonichu hadn't even bothered to try saving his own son mid-fall, relegating the responsibility to a 'nanny' even though, as the zappin' hero of CWCville, he was far, _far_ more than capable of the speed and agility necessary for such a trivial and simple task. Furthermore, Kevin had no words to describe the sheer mind-numbing perplexity of how Sonichu had managed to turn an accident that he had been fully capable of preventing into accusing Kevin of challenging Robbie's sexual orientation.

"But _nothing!_" Rosechu added, appearing out of nowhere to back up her husband. "You ought to be ashamed of yourself! I thought Jews were supposed to be more responsible and careful with their children! They don't know any better! You need to set a better example, or else they will develop…" She drew in a deep breath, as if about to speak a horrible profanity. _"Asperger's!"_

A collective gasp ran through the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon in the room, while BILLY MAYS and Heather surreptitiously rolled their eyes and shot Kevin encouraging glances. Wild hurriedly covered Sandy's ears, and Angelica nearly dropped her wineglass of CWC Orange Soda.

"_Wat awe you awl tawkin abowt?"_ asked SUZI, scratching her headspikes confusedly.

"Suzy!" exclaimed Kevin, and stepped over to pick up the little LIESA unit as Rosechu departed, presumably to resume cooking. "There you are! I've been looking all over for you!" He patted her on her cloth head. "You've been such a good little Rosey! Are you having fun tonight?"

"_YEAH!" _SUZI squealed. _"I made wots of fwiends an BIWWY MAYS gave me sum candee!"_

Across the room, BILLY MAYS winked at Kevin. The Jerkop returned the gesture, but Sonichu and Robbie didn't notice. "That's great, Suzy! Listen, I want you to meet the original Sonichu!"

"Copyright 2000, by Christian Weston Chandler," added Sonichu with a self-righteous grin.

"Yeah, that," Kevin continued, and pointed to the yellow fuzzball in Sonichu's arms. "Suzy, this is Robbie Sonee. You know…the one you dreamed about? He's going to lead the next Combo!"

"An I'm gonna wun wealwy fast wun day, just wike my Daddee!" Robbie managed to announce through the peppermint. If there were any justice in the world, he would have choked on the hard candy, but his mouth was far too small to accommodate the entire thing at once.

Through her inter-squad link, SUZI detected a massive spike in Steve Morrison's blood pressure. It was time to put her sinister plan into action. She stared straight into Robbie's lizard eyes and winked. _"Ex-kyoose me, but I heawd you were wooking fow a boyfwiend-fwee Wosey, wight?"_

"Uh…YEAH!" replied the Sonee after a few stuttered attempts at a response. "I've been in need of a Sweetheawt fwom da Gwownd-Up! So wat's youwr nayme?"

"_My nayme is Soozee Wosey!"_ stated the LIESA unit proudly, and held out an armstub.

Robbie returned the gesture as Kevin and Sonichu held out their respective passengers for stub-contact. "I'm Wobbie Sonee, but you may cawl me Wobbie!"

"_Wewl, I was wondewin if you want ta pway Hide an Seek in da howse wif me?"_

The Sonee's hideous eyes bulged with anticipation. "Okay, shuwe!"

"_Gweat!"_ squealed SUZI. _"I'wl meet you in da wiving woom in five minuwts!"_ Kevin placed her on the ground and she waddled off, giggling, leaving the Jerkop alone with Sonichu and his son. Robbie was shivering with nervous glee, as big drops of sweat formed on his fuzzy face. Finally, he pushed himself upright and raised an armstub into the air, his harelip mouth forming a shape that Kevin could only describe as a red bat'leth, the Klingon ceremonial blade from _Star Trek_.

"YAY!" the Sonee cried at the top of his lungs. "MY WUV QWEST IS FYNAWEE OVEWR!"

"Yes partner; you have found a heartsweet of your own," Sonichu commended his cheering son, and placed Robbie in Kevin's arms. "And now Cera's Jewish friend is going to help get you all nice and cleaned up for your big First Date with Suzy Rosey! If you are lucky, she will be your Sweetheart from the Ground-Up and help you lead the next Chaotic Combo, just like Mommy!"

"YAY!" Robbie shrieked again. Suddenly, his expression changed to one of surprise. "Uh-oh…"

_OhmyGodohmyGodohmyfuckingArceus,_ Kevin thought frantically as he looked around for the nearest bathroom. Sonichu was staring right at him expectantly, and Robbie's plump tummy was rumbling like a miniature earthquake. There was only one possible way the situation could end now. What he was holding was nothing less than a living, breathing, fuzzy, 25-pound time bomb.

Keeping himself as calm as possible, the Jerkop turned and headed for the main hallway, crossed to the horrifically-placed bathroom, grabbed the knob, twisted it open it, and…

"AAAAAAIIIIIEEEEEE! LEAVE ME ALONE, YOU DIRTY PEDOFORK! GEEZE! CAN'T A GIRL EVEN PUT IN A TAMPON WITHOUT BEING TABLOIDED OR EXPLOITED?!"

"Hi, Mommee!" squealed Robbie, and cheerfully waved to Rosechu just before Kevin slammed the bathroom door faster than he had ever slammed a door before in his life. The rumbling was growing louder and louder now, and unless he found a toilet soon, the Sonee was going to blow. His unnatural digestive system had processed half of the red velvet cake he'd just eaten, along with two pounds of chocolate, a quart of CWCnog, and four slices of the 'special' mince pie that Kevin had brought to the party. How he had stomached it all was a mystery.

Panicking, Kevin dashed to the forbidden door – Sonichu and Rosechu's bedroom. He had heard (and in the case of Rosechu's nude photos, seen) that there was another bathroom in the house, one that could only have been attached to the master bedroom. Opening the door, he leapt inside, tore open the adjacent door to the bathroom, and plopped Robbie's plump bottom onto the toilet.

_Thank fucking Arceus,_ he thought as the wet splashing sounds commenced. If Robbie had had an 'accident' all over him, Operation Hedgeclipper would have been reported as 'carried out a full two months early by a lone Jerkop, who was quickly KIA after his situation was compromised'.

No. He had to live. He had to see the operation through to the bitter end of the Sonichu children. For Zoey and Amanda, for Jake and Frank and Ivy and Sarah and the Asperpedia Four. But most of all…for Matt. Since Hogwash, Kevin's thoughts had been focused on one thing and one thing alone – vengeance for his fallen best friend. It was vengeance that had driven him to volunteer to infiltrate AnneWeston Elementary School, vengeance that drove him to seek the friendship of Cera Rosey, vengeance that kept him from grabbing Robbie Sonee, shoving his smug little face into the toilet, and drowning the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon in its own fecal matter.

The day would come when he and Sonichu would see each other plain, and face off in a vicious battle for victory or death. But it was not this day. This was a day of preparation.

While Robbie continued unloading a disproportionate amount of filth into the porcelain bowl, Kevin unzipped his backpack in plain view of the Sonee and removed a tiny surveillance camera – one of two dozen that Vivian Gee had provided for him to place around 14 Brunchville Lane. On the day Operation Hedgeclipper went into effect, the cameras would at last be switched on, capturing footage of the entire glorious montage of pain, torture, and bloody carnage.

Kevin stepped over to the side of Sonichu and Rosechu's bed and, taking care not to touch the sheets, rolled a little piece of Mighty Putty from BILLY MAYS into a ball and pressed it into the camera's base. Working quickly, he affixed the camera to the wall, briefly adjusting its angle so that it would have a clear view of the big bed and the floor around it, then stepped back. Perfect.

"_Hi dere, Nanny Kevin!"_ SUZI waddled into the room and waved at him. _"Whewe's Wobbie?"_

"Awl dun!" Robbie exclaimed self-importantly, and toppled clumsily off the toilet onto the floor. Kevin held his breath, raised a leg, and managed to hit the flush lever with his foot, thus avoiding the deadly fumes rising from the bowl. "Awe we gonna pway Hide an Seek now, Soozee?"

"_YEAH!"_ squealed the LIESA unit. _"But wen you find me, you hafta tag me! Gotta go fast!"_

The words were music to Robbie's long, black-tipped ears. "YAY! I'm da fastewst Sonee in da wowld! I'm gonna find you an tag you, an den I'm gonna win! Dis wiwl be easee! YAY!"

"Not so fast," Kevin growled, and snatched up the cake and frosting-covered Sonee in one hand. "Bath time!" Taking care to avoid putting his fingers anywhere near Robbie's soiled underside, he placed the little chu in the sink and turned the water to a lukewarm temperature, then blasted Robbie with a quick rinse and scrubbed his short yellow and brown fur until every last crumb of red velvet cake and every smear of creamy frosting was washed away. It was the single most disgusting task he'd ever undertaken, but the thought of Matt's lifeless eyes kept him scrubbing.

Once Robbie was all rinsed, Kevin rather unceremoniously balled him up in a big fluffy towel and rolled it around on the floor to dry him off, then unwrapped the dizzy, satisfied Sonee and placed him in front of SUZI. "Okay, you're all clean now, Robbie! You two have fun now!"

SUZI giggled. _"Okay, stawt cowntin ta twenny!"_

The Sonee covered his eyes. "Wun, twee, sebben, thiwteen, nine, twee, sebben, fowty-too…"

In less than three seconds, the little combat drone had fired her repulsor skirts and zoomed up to the top of Sonichu and Rosechu's dresser. Landing on her hydraulic stumpfeet, she waddled over to a large potted zapbud flower and hid behind it. Kevin chuckled. It wasn't a particularly good hiding place, but Robbie would never find her, and even if he did, he'd still have to climb up the entire dresser to even have a shot at tagging SUZI. More likely, he would just get tired first and ask her to give up the game because it was too stressful for him.

_Now for Christine and Cera,_ he thought to himself as he made his way out of the bedroom and back toward the rec room. After surviving his brush with the potentially shitty situation that Sonichu had inadvertently presented him with, he was more than ready to passively take out some of his anger on the other two Sonichu brats. SUZI would keep Robbie busy long enough for him to finish planting the other cameras, and then it was just a matter of making his way out of the party without being delayed any further by rampant idiocy and run-ins with more chus.

"Dere you awe, Kevin!" Cera waddled up to the Jerkop and hugged his shin, while Christine shot him a momentary glance and instantly returned to staring into her handheld, or rather, 'stubheld' mirror. "Mewwy See-Mas! I am so happee you awe here at da Chwistmas pawtee! YAY!"

"And I'm happy to be here too, Cera," replied Kevin, picturing her screaming and struggling in agony as he sliced her belly open and ripped out her internal organs one by one with his bare hands. He smiled. "Merry C-Mas! Guess what I brought for a certain little Rosey I know!"

The pink fuzzball's eyes lit up like two globular Christmas lights. "OOH! CEWAH CANDEE?"

"Very smart!" Kevin congratulated her, and reached into his pocket to retrieve another plastic bag of the rich, chewy chocolate candy that Cera had come to love so much.

While the greedy Rosey and her siblings were more than happy to devour immense quantities of the delicious confection, they never once had inquired about what was in it, or why Rosechu had never been able to find it in stores. The truth was simple – Kevin was pulling a Sweeney Todd on the Sonichu family. With the holidays approaching, Kuri had taken up the solemn duty of capturing, preparing, and cooking as many feral and homebred Sonees and Roseys as possible into a variety of holiday-themed dishes. These very same chu larvae now currently resided in the bellies of Sonichu and Rosechu's children, as well as anychu who had eaten Kevin's mince pie.

It was a small act of revenge to have turned the chus into cannibals, but a satisfying one, too.

"Hey, Cera?" Kevin asked, kneeling down beside the Rosey as she stuffed her harelip mouth with piece after piece of the chocolate and shredded baby chu meat candy. "Want to be a big, responsible girl and help make Mommy and Daddy and Grandpa Chris all really happy?"

Cera sighed and looked up, annoyed at having been interrupted. "Do I get a pwesent fiwst?"

"But I just gave you a present," Kevin faltered, pointing to the bag of chocolate. "Cera Candy."

The Rosey let out another stress-sigh and crossed her stubs. "No, swow-in-da-mind, dat was fow _me!_ Jewish fowk awe sposed ta give dere Wosey fwiends pwesents weneva dey see dem! Mommee towd me dat was a Jewish twa-di-shun, an Mommee knows _awl_ abowt dat stuff!" At this sudden revelation, Christine perked up. She was a Rosey too, and Kevin _had_ to be her friend.

"I am going to pull you apart _one layer of skin at a time_, Cera Rosey," said Kevin softly.

Cera waddled forward a few steps. "Wat?"

"I said, I've got another present for you!" Reaching into his other pocket, the Jerkop pulled out a tiny Rosey-sized wooden spatula that Steve had carved with his kukri. "See, it's a spatula, just like mommies use! Now you can cook, just like Mommy!" He conveniently forgot to mention the fact that, being wood, the utensil wouldn't last very long near any sort of heat source.

"YAY!" Cera yanked the spatula out of his hand and hugged it with her stubs. "I wuv cooking!"

"Right, then." Kevin smiled. "Now Cera, what I want you to do is-"

"Whewe's _my_ pwesent?" Christine whined, shuffling forward with her mirror in one armstub and the other one outstretched towards Kevin in a blatant 'gimme' gesture. "Cewah an Mommee said dat Jewish fowk awe sposed ta give dere Wosey fwiends pwesents weneva dey see-"

_You have got to be fucking kidding me._ "Of course I've got a present for you, Christine." _Well, Albert Ledger does, anyway. Several presents. Several very sharp, very very painful presents._

The purple Rosey immediately brightened up. "YAY! I wuv pwesents! Mommee an Daddee an Gwampa Chwis give me pwesents awl da time 'cuz I'm such a pwetty Wosey! Do you tink im-"

"Yes! I do!" Kevin answered hastily, trying to keep from screaming as he rummaged around in his backpack for a suitable present for Christine. All he had left were the cameras and a gun. Oh, if only he could use the latter. "It's…uh…Robbie's playing with it."

Christine immediately blessed the Jerkop with the single most annoying stress-sigh yet. "But I want _my_ pwesent! I want my pwesent an I want it NOW! NOW NOW NOW NOW-

"GUGHGHHGUHGUGHUGGUGHUGHGUHGGGHHH!"

Kevin rose to his feet and curiously opened the door to Sonichu and Rosechu's bedroom, while Christine and Cera waddled after him, whining about their apparent lack of presents and complaining about the stinginess of 'Jewish folk'. Ignoring the two Roseys, he pushed open the door and was instantly greeted by the insanely pleasing sight of Robbie Sonee rolling around on Sonichu and Rosechu's bed with a large yellow vibrating dildo protruding from his little mouth. SUZI was still on the dresser above an open drawer, watching interestedly as the Sonee sucked and gagged on the toy, making little "GUGHUGHGUGHUGUGHGH!" sounds. What puzzled Kevin, though, was Robbie's apparent and intense enjoyment of the experience.

SUZI glanced over and smiled. _"I fownd sum happee stick candee an Wobbie wanted ta twy it!"_

"Okay, that's enough." Kevin helped her down and placed her beside the Roseys. "You kids go play in the rec room. Suzy, we're gonna be leaving in a few minutes, okay?"

"_Ohhhhhhhhhkaaaaaaayyyyyyyyyy."_ SUZI let out a short sigh and waddled away. Christine and Cera pondered whether it was a better idea to stay and beg for presents, or follow the LIESA and beg _her_ for presents. In the end, the latter won out. When the larvae had departed, Kevin slowly, ever so slowly, made his way over to the bed, grabbed the dildo, somehow managed to pry it out of the Sonee's throat, and placed it back in the open drawer among Rosechu's unmentionables.

"Awwww, why'd you take my happee stick candee?" whined Robbie. "Dat was tastee candee!"

Kevin sighed. "Robbie, you know you're not supposed to play with Mommy's special toys." _Just be glad SUZI didn't tell you to shove it up your butthole, you naïve little shit._

The Sonee blinked. "Whewe's Soozee Wosey?"

"Robbie, I'm sorry, but she was just playing a trick on you," Kevin explained truthfully. "She doesn't want to be your Sweetheart from the Ground-Up anymore."

Robbie's face fell for about half a second, then returned to its normal state of happy curiosity when he noticed a discolored crusty patch on the covers of Sonichu and Rosechu's bed. Rolling over onto his stomach, he pulled his dense little body over to it and began licking it to see if it tasted as good as the 'happy stick candy'. Kevin simply gave up and allowed Robbie the freedom to explore the wonders of his own creation. Sonichu or Rosechu would find their son before the night was done – he was certain of that. Before he left, though, he made sure to close the drawer.

Eventually, the Jerkop's work was done, though how he'd managed it still remained a mystery to him. Chandler himself never showed up at the party like he promised, but Kevin had a sneaking suspicion that the reasoning behind the Mayor's absence started with "god" and ended in "war". Adhering the final camera to the middle of the kitchen ceiling, he headed for the rec room, said a quick goodbye to Heather and BILLY MAYS, collected SUZI, and left through the front door.

"_That was fuuuuuUUUUUUnnnn," _the LIESA remarked as they walked down the driveway of 14 Brunchville Lane, leaving the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon behind to their night of eating, drinking, vapid talk, and, in Bubbles and Blake's case, inevitable fucking. _"Are we ever gonna go back there again? I wanna play with the little hamsters some more! Heeheeheeheeheehee!"_

Kevin grinned. "Of course we will, SUZI. Of course we will."

* * *

"**The Tenth Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by Manajerkop**

**Monday, December 22, 2008 excerpt from operative psychological evaluation report log**

**Interviewer: Wallace, Kathleen Subject: Shaw, Kevin**

**Wallace: **I'm not going to ask you to tell me any more than you want to, Kevin, but it would make these sessions a whole lot easier if you'd just allow me to put you under hypnosis again.

**Shaw:** I said this the last time we tried that, ma'am. There's just nothing there. It doesn't matter now anyway. Graduon's dead, and he was the only one who could've explained the psychic link.

**Wallace:** But you see why it's suspicious, don't you? You, Marty Walsh, and Wes Iseli aren't related at all, and yet all three of you claim to have had this innate ability to hear Graduon even when he wasn't directly speaking to you. Whatever he did to get that echo from Magi-Chan into your head, it saved the world. And thanks to Waters, the convoy never made it out of CWCville.

**Shaw:** Ben did all the work taking out the freeway with SUZI. He's the real hero, not me.

**Wallace:** Your squad lost two members that day…three if you count Martinez. Your best friend and your squad leader were KIA, and you were present for both of their deaths. In terms of loss versus survivor's guilt, you're not displaying very much anymore, and that worries me, Kevin.

**Shaw: **Maybe I'm just getting numb to everything.

**Wallace: **I don't think that's it. I think you're trying too hard.

**Shaw: **What?

**Wallace: **I spoke with both Ledger and Morrison over the course of this past week. They're both concerned that you might be falling into a state of emotional paralysis. And…Parker, too.

**Shaw: **What did Allie say about me?

**Wallace:** She's worried about you, Kevin. They're all worried about you. You keep throwing yourself into the midst of the Sonichu family, putting yourself at risk with no regard for how it might affect your squadmates. What if you were compromised? What if you were killed?

**Shaw:** Look at what's at stake here. It's either us or them, and I don't want to lose one more of my friends to those bastards. If I've got to put my life on the line for the greater good-

**Wallace:** But you don't _have_ to. You put the cameras in 14 Brunchville Lane now – you don't need to go play with Cera or interact with her family or…_anything_ anymore. You're done.

**Shaw: **It's all about keeping up appearances. We've got to make them think they're invincible – that all the bullshit Chandler keeps saying about them is true. And when they're not expecting it, we're going to take everything away from Sonichu and Rosechu and Chandler. Everything.

**Wallace:** Because of what Sonichu did to Matt?

**Shaw:** To all of us. But Matt was the final catalyst for me.

**Wallace:** How so?

**Shaw:** When I came to CWCville, I didn't know who I was. I didn't know what I was doing. I was just some dumbass naïve little kid looking for a purpose in life. You know, I used to work at the Shopping Center as a mall cop. Matt and Jake were my best friends back then. Now they're both dead, and the only person I have left to connect me with those days is a girl who worked at a Burger King. ***exhales*** But she's the one thing I have left. And they won't take her from me.

**Wallace:** And…what if they do, Kevin? What if they do?

**Shaw:** ***long pause* **They won't.

* * *

"**The Eleventh Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by HotaruThodt **

**Tuesday, December 23, 2008, east CWCville, Wilderness HQ**

_It's just not the same,_ thought Al as he wheeled the Battle Bus through the security checkpoint and up the concrete driveway to Wilderness's large garage. _I missed driving you, baby, but you were better off with Matt._ He sighed and looked over his shoulder. "You guys, we're here!"

"All right!" yelled Marty, and leapt up from his seat, grabbed Franken-Sonee, and dashed to the front of the armored school bus. SUZI hovered beside him, giggling and doing flips in midair, while Sugarplum Fury yawned, stretched, and lazily trotted down the aisle after her friends.

"You remembered your present, right?" the Legend asked, chuckling to himself as the little boy gaped in awe at the imposing rows of Crackders and S.A.V.s docked in the former factory. The PVCC's supply of Transformers had been severely depleted after the June Offensive, but for the most part, the loyalists had failed to collect their destroyed parts. Robotnik's construction teams had simply rebuilt a fair share of the combat mechs from the scrap, and melted down the rest.

Marty grinned and held up a shoebox wrapped in paper torn from the _Sonichu_ propaganda comic.

"Good choice of gift wrap," remarked Al, and pulled the Battle Bus up beside a parked Punislav. "Remember, don't wander off, keep the hat on, and whatever you do, don't lose Franken-Sonee."

"Okay!" replied Marty excitedly, and adjusted his Lancers cap to cover his stubby red horns.

"Nee!" added the stitched-together Sonee.

"That's him," a woman's voice sounded from outside the door. "Ledger! Good to see you!"

"Same to you, Hotaru." Al and Marty stepped out of the Battle Bus to find three Jerkops waiting for them – a woman with very long brown hair, black armor, and an artificial right eye who looked to be the Manajerk of the group, a young man with glasses and red hair, and a forlorn-looking man with a baseball cap and a strange scar in the middle of his forehead. A Vaporeon sat on the floor beside the one-eyed woman, ruffling its fins and staring hungrily at Franken-Sonee. Sugar glared at the Pokémon briefly, then sniffed the air and wandered off to inspect an S.A.V.

"We've had a few additions to the Cosmos since the last time you were here," Hotaru explained. She pointed to the man with the scarred head. "This is Michael. We rescued him from a straight camp during the June Offensive. There's another one, Desdemona, but she's on assignment for most of the afternoon with Johnny and Wanda. You're here to see your Jerkop, right?"

Al nodded. "Yes. And you're our escort?"

"Not officially. I just wanted to know how things were going." The Cosmos Manajerk smiled at Marty. "Hey there, little guy! That's a neat little Sonee doll! Did you make it for him, Ledger?"

"Ssssss!" hissed Franken-Sonee.

The red-haired man drew back. "Holy shit. Looks like something you'd come up with, Hotaru."

"Aww, come on, Calvin. It's cute." Hotaru laughed softly and patted Franken-Sonee on his ears. "So who's the kid, Ledger? You finally decided to settle down and adopt one of your own?"

"Pretty much," answered the Legend, casually withholding the truth of Marty's parentage. "His name's Marty. One of my operatives found him out in the abandoned zone after Menchi-Nasu."

"Well, you definitely made the right choice in keeping him. He's adorable," commented the Manajerk. "Come on, we'll take you over to the dorms." She turned and beckoned to Al and Marty, who set off after the group with SUZI, Sugar, and the Vaporeon following close behind.

"You wouldn't believe how many orders Robotnik's been getting for a replica of your bus," said Calvin as they made their way down to the first sublevel of Wilderness. "That thing's selling like hotcakes – it's a miracle we can even crank out enough of them to meet the demand. Meanwhile, you go into any toy store on the west side and all the shelves are full of Sonee and Rosey dolls and Chaotic Combo action figures." He shivered. "It's no wonder everyone wants PVCC toys."

"Anything to spread the Christmas cheer, right?" commented Al. "Plus, it's good for income."

"I want one!" Marty added excitedly. "Can I get a toy Battle Bus for Christmas, Uncle Al?"

"Be sure and tell Santa!" said Al. "It's only two days away, and he's got to know soon!"

Marty grinned with anticipation and hugged Franken-Sonee, who hissed in surprise.

"All right, we're here," announced Hotaru, and opened a door on the side of the hallway. "If he's not there, someone'll page him." She grinned at Al. "Good seeing you, Ledger. Take care."

"You too, Hotaru," replied Al as he ushered Marty, SUZI, and Sugar inside. "Take care."

The sleeping quarters was small and sparsely furnished, with a single cot against the wall, a table and chair, and a side closet. And lying on the cot, surrounded by medical equipment, was…

"Buenos dias, you ugly son of a bitch," coughed Nick Martinez as he sat up to greet the Legend.

"Feliz Navidad, you bastard," laughed Al, and gently patted the sniper on his shoulder. "How you been, Nick? You look a lot better than last time."

"They've mostly got me doing paperwork. Copywriting and boring shit like that." Nick yawned and stretched as Sugar climbed onto the cot and curled up on his lap. "At least I'm off the tank now. Still have problems with fluid buildup, but really, I'm just glad to be alive. How's Kevin?"

Al's smile faltered. "He's okay. You know, he spent the 21st at 14 Brunchville Lane?"

"No shit, hombre?"

"Yep. Cera invited him, so we took the chance to do some research for Operation Hedgeclipper."

Nick leaned back in admiration. "When the hell did the kid finally grow a pair?"

"Hey. Come on." Al poked him in the forehead jokingly. "Be nice. He saved your life, after all."

"Yeah, I know. I haven't forgotten, Al." The sniper patted his chest, just over the bandage that covered his old wound. "God, they're a bunch of sissies, keeping me here. I can still hold a rifle and pull a trigger, you know. A few more months and I should be back in business."

"You stay here and do what they tell you," the Legend cautioned his friend. "Look, I know you want in on Hedgeclipper, but so does the rest of the PVCC. Everyone's going crazy with anticipation, and we can't risk jeopardizing the operation because of one collapsed lung.

Nick's face fell. "So that's it, then. I'd just be baggage. Figures."

"Don't say that. Don't _ever_ say that." Al gazed sternly into the Jerkop's eyes. "You think I'd leave you behind after all these years? Hell, Nick, I've known you since before I met _Steve_."

Nick nodded. "All right, fair enough. Still miss the blond bastard, though." He looked up at Marty and smiled. "Hola, chico! Como estas?"

"Muy bye-en?" Marty answered cautiously.

"Bien, amigo. Bee-en." The sniper laughed. "Don't worry, you'll get it. Just remember B-N, just say the two letters." He patted Sugar behind her ears. "I see you hiding that. Come on, give it."

Grinning, the little blond boy handed over the wrapped shoebox. "Steve told me you like these!"

"Oh he did, did he?" Nick ripped off the comic wrapping paper and tossed it aside with a grunt of revulsion. "Ugh. _Sonichu #11_. Thanks for the toilet paper, Marty. Did this just come out?"

"Yeah, Chandler printed it unfinished," Al explained. "The lazy fuck couldn't even finish his damn _A Sonichu Christmas_ episode. Kevin got a mention, though. Cera thinks he's Jewish."

Nick shook his head in bewilderment and opened the box. His face broke out in a massive grin. "Oh no. No, he _didn't_." Reaching in, he pulled out a large bottle of Break You Dead hot sauce and a blue Speedo. "Goddamn. He just couldn't let that go, could he? Thanks a _lot_, Marty."

"The hot sauce was _my_ idea," Marty said defensively. "Al, are we gonna play Santa now?"

"Just a sec." Al unbuttoned his trench coat to reveal a Santa suit beneath it. Grabbing a spare pillow from Nick's cot, he stuffed it down the front of the costume, then reached into his pack and withdrew a Santa hat and a fluffy white beard, then cleared his throat. "Ho ho ho!"

"A little jollier," Nick suggested.

"HO HO HO!" chortled Al, and sat down in a chair as SUZI and Marty gathered around. "MERRY CHRISTMAS, EVERYONE! HO HO HO!" He smiled. "Who wants to go first?"

"Me! Me! I do!" shouted Marty, raising his hand in excitement.

"_YAAAY! PICK ME! PICK ME!"_ squealed SUZI as she performed an energetic backflip.

"Come up here then, little Marty!" The Legend gestured to his padded lap, and Marty quickly sat down. "Now then, have _you_ been a good boy this year?"

"Yeah!" The look of joy on the child's face nearly melted Al's heart. He'd lost everything – his home, his mother, his…father…and he'd endured horrors that no child his age should ever have had to endure, yet there he sat, as excited and as full of holiday spirit as any normal boy or girl.

"Ho ho ho! Of course you have!" Al patted Marty on the back. "And as you know, good little boys get lots of nice presents! Is there anything in particular you'd like Santa to bring you?"

"A Battle Bus! I want a remote controlled Battle Bus toy!" exclaimed Marty eagerly. "And a jar of pickles for Franken-Sonee, and a BB assault rifle to shoot feral Sonees and Roseys with!"

"HO HO HO!" bellowed Al. "You've certainly got quite the list! I'll see what my elves can do!" He helped Marty off his lap and ruffled his hair tenderly. "Merry Christmas, Marty!"

"_I wanna go now! I wanna go now!"_ SUZI hovered over to Al and dropped into his lap, her eye-screens epileptically flashing red and green, with images of big wrapped presents.

"Ho ho ho! Well, SUZI, have _you_ been a good LIESA this year?"

SUZI paused. _"Uh…I dunno. I talked Robbie Sonee into deep-throating a dildo. Is that good?"_

"VERY good! Ho ho ho!" The Legend chuckled and patted SUZI's head. "And what do _you_ want for Christmas, little SUZI?"

"_I wanna bottle of SpaaAAAaaam, and I wanna bag of tooooothpaste…FOR GREAT JUSTICE! And I wanna go play dress-up in the paaaaaark, and I wanna shelf full of SCREWDRIVERS, and a popcorn maker full of NyquIIIIIIIiiiiil, and I want two HUGE piles of water, and a box of pandaaaaaaas, and four gallons of NYLON SOCKS, and a GIANT MARSMAR COMIC, and a Non-Human Flying Human Sonee Centipede TO BE MY FRIEND FOREVER AND EVER! And a car made of soap, and a sammich made of soap, and a soap made of soap, and a FIVE FOOT PINGAS made of soap, and a…"_

"ENOUGH!" roared Al, clapping his mittened hands over his ears. "GOD DAMN IT, SUZI, ENOUGH! Go play with Sugar or something!"

* * *

"**The Twelfth Day to CWC-mas"**

**Written by arpaat**

**Wednesday, December 24, 2008, Slumberland, audio log from Patrick Ryan's office**

**Vivian Gee (on speaker phone):**_ Hello?_

**Patrick Ryan:** "Hey, Vivian? It's me. Just calling to check in on the plan for tonight. You sure you can get the KCWC broadcast offline?

**Gee:**_ Yeah. We managed to get a Devil Troll in there about two hours ago. You'll be fine._

**Ryan:** Excellent. Then it's just a matter of waiting for the panic.

**Gee:**_ Should be quite the show. Will Michael be safe?_

**Ryan:** Of course he will! Hell, he's going to play himself, so we have nothing to worry about.

**Gee:**_ I can't believe you're taking such a cavalier attitude towards this, Patrick. Think about the potential consequences._

**Ryan:** It's Christmas Eve, Vivian. The chus don't really care about anything that doesn't involve fucking or presents. Or both.

**Gee:**_ They don't…for now. But what about when they think Snyder's going on a rampage?_

**Ryan:** That's the point. The adults go nuts and Christmas is ruined for the little brats, since they can't tell fantasy from reality...like someone we all know. And if this is such a horrible idea, then why are you signing off on it?

**Gee:**_ Because of your role in the uprising. When you take out KCWC and divert the EHPF's attention, they'll focus on you while we _***censored***_. Think of it as practice for what's to come._

**Ryan:** All right. So when the 'On Air' sign turns on, it means that all of the chus can hear me?

**Gee:** _Affirmative. And one more thing, Patrick. Judging by the footage I'm getting from your office, you look more stiff than you really are in that suit._

**Ryan:** Of course the suit's stiff! I just starched it yesterday!

**Gee:**_ "No, I mean you look like an old man in that suit. Just read your script. Vivian Gee out."_

**Ryan:** Eh, suit yourself. You just don't understand style, baby.

***call ends, sounds of a beer bottle being opened and a lighter being flicked***

***background music, "God's Gonna Cut You Down"***

***door opens, meaty smacking sound - a severed Rosechu head being tossed to Ryan***

**Ryan:** You finally got her, eh Zero?

**Zero Sonichu:** I was looking for that bitch for eight months. I'm just happy I finally got her.

**Ryan:** Of course. I mean, she did things to you...right?

**Zero:** Let's…not talk about that. Also, she had babies.

**Ryan:** _What?_ I thought she of all chus would show some restraint in choosing mates.

**Zero:** I found a lot of her bastards roaming around the city while I was hunting her. I think that answers your question right there.

**Ryan:** Damn. I know the chus make rabbits look like nuns, but I didn't think they'd go _that_ far. Sticking their dicks in an axe-murdering crazy Rosechu.

**Zero:** Your species can't seem to avoid doing it either. Why would you expect the average member of my species not to when we have the libido of about ten teenage human boys?

**Ryan:** Okay, smart guy, how do you not fuck everything in sight then?

**Zero:** Fighting, sparring with Simonchu, and hunting Creepichu takes a lot out of a chu, you know. But it's worth it, considering the price of rampant fucking. I don't want bastard babies.

**Ryan:** Zero, I hate to cut you off, but get that fucking head out of here, okay?

**Zero:** It's not rotting. I had it taken to a taxidermist.

**Ryan:** _I don't care._ That head's creeping me out, man! ***sound of head being tossed back***

**Zero:** Whatever. ***fading footsteps, door closes***

***several moments of silence, door opens***

**Michael Snyder:** Who the hell was that?

**Ryan:** One of the two winners of the Carnival of Carnage.

**Snyder:** Oh. And…what was he carrying?

**Ryan:** The head of the other winner of the Carnival of Carnage.

**Snyder:** Jesus. So, do you have my script?

**Ryan:** Yeah, here. ***rustling of papers*** Check those over. I'm gonna start the lead-in for now.

***feedback from microphone turning on, "God's Gonna Cut You Down" stops playing***

**Ryan:** Two…one… ***clears throat*** Greetings from R-PAT, everyone. This is Patrick Ryan, coming to you live with a special guest on tonight's show. Other than Mary Lee Walsh, this man has been the biggest scapegoat for our dear Mayor Chandler's problems. Tonight, he will be playing himself in a little story I wrote a while back. Ladies and gentlemen, Michael Snyder.

**Snyder:** It's good to be here, Patrick. Now, let's get started.

**Ryan:** Right. ***laughs*** 'Twas the day before Christmas - every chu was full of joy. Even the Sonees, the species' pitiful excuse for a boy.

**Ryan:** …to place recolor babies in great amounts of stress. They'd search every house and all the Christmas trees, leaving no gifts at all for the spoiled Sonees and Roseys. ***laughs* **Well, folks, it's time for our first break now. Please enjoy this holiday message from our sponsor!

**Dr. Ivo Robotnik (recorded advertisement):** Get a load of _this_, kids! You've seen them in the news! You've seen them on the strrrrrrreet! Maybe you've even seen them _in action!_ And now, for the first time in historrrrrrry, _you_ can own one of the PVCC's many rrrrrridiculously badass land and air vehicles with my all-new set of rrrrrrradio-controlled toys! But you know what they say! The more the merrier! Collect them all! The Crackder! The S.A.V.! The Punislav! The VANguard! Diabolus the Vindicator! The Party Van! Even the legendary Battle Bus, complete with RRRRRREAL BATTLE DAMAGE! All made by your EVIL GENIUS friends at Robotnik Technologies, where no idea is too insane! But you won't find _these_ toys by shopPINGAS usual! Order yours today from your district's PVCC contact, and aid the grrrrrrrowing rrrrrrrrresistance!

**Ryan (picking up phone):** Vivian, what's going on?

**Gee:** _It seems that KCWC managed to go back online. There's just conflicting static on our end._

**Ryan:** Can't we just hack into the station's electrical grid?

**Gee:** _Actually…we could. Hold on. I'm redirecting the Devil Troll to access their power supply._

**Ryan:** All right! Now let's leave KCWC in the dark until we're done!

**Gee:** _Affirmative. Commencing shutdown of electricity to KCWC. And…offline. Go ahead._

**Ryan:** For the first house he went to, he saw no sign of chus. There was no sign at all, not even a pair of Sonee shoes…

**Ryan:** …on the moon, Snyder waited, and you can surely bet, the worst for the surviving brats was sure to come yet! From your liberators at the PVCC one and all, Merry CWC-mas, and happy New Year to y'all! ***broadcast stops*** Well, that went better than expected.

**Snyder:** You think it worked?

**Ryan:** Let me check. ***dialing on phone***

**Gee:** _Vivian Gee speaking, who is this?_

**Ryan:** Yeah, it's me again. I want to know how our little broadcast worked.

**Gee:** _Even better than we thought. Chandler declared a state of emergency twenty minutes ago. The chus are panicking, we've got reports of mass hysteria in the subdivisions, and the EHPF are swarming the streets looking for Michael Snyder. I must say, you did a good job._

**Snyder:** Glad I'm in here, then!

**Gee:** _Indeed. Also, I'm happy that no Jerkops were on any missions tonight._

**Ryan:** I just wonder what happens when they realize it was a hoax.

**Gee:** _They'll be angry, and that's what I'm concerned about._

**Ryan:** Still, that makes my job easier when the time comes.

**Gee:** _It does. But when they find out that your Hedgeclipper broadcast is real, I don't think you'll make it out of there alive. They'll be coming down on you from everywhere, Patrick. Be careful._

**Ryan:** Vivian...I'm prepared for that. But, I'd rather die a free man than live as a bitch to those goddamn Sparkies!

**Gee:** _Your spirit far outweighs your abilities. I just hope you realize that before it's too late._

**Ryan:** I know. At least I'll have some partners with me.

**Gee:** _Actually, change of plans. You'll be going in alone – we need all of our squads for the retaliation. If you can get Zero and the Fighting Irish on your side…_

**Ryan:** Actually, I think there are far more people than you think that are willing to join me.

**Gee:** _I just said we didn't approve of sending Jerkop squads to KCWC until Hedgeclipper's over!_

**Ryan: **Fair enough. I'll see what I can do to get some…unlikely allies on our side. I mean, more than half of our recruits came from the Soup Hotels, right?

**Gee:** _If you want to die surrounded by bums, that's not my concern. Vivian Gee out._

***call ends, long pause, broken only by sound of a lighter flicking***

**Snyder:** You've got a lot on your mind, don't you, kid?

**Ryan: **Yeah, but, I gotta keep fighting, you know? For me, for the city, and for the hope that I'll see my family and friends back home someday.

***end recording***

* * *

"**Christmas in CWCville"**

**Written by Manajerkop**

**Thursday, December 25, 2008, south CWCville, Slumberland, Honey Badger barracks**

"We stand here, today, in the eyes of God and Arceus," Al recited solemnly, keeping his head bowed as Steve, Kevin, Kuri, Allie, Serge, Nate, and Jexis stepped forward one by one to place a candle on the little shrine to the fallen that he had constructed from cinderblocks and scrap metal. "On the day of our lord Jesus Christ's birth, we honor those who fell…our brothers and sisters who died fighting to save our world from those who seek to slaughter the innocent, to subjugate the poor, to crush the human race for the betterment of their own species. We stand here today to honor that which they have given us, to ensure that their sacrifices will not have been in vain."

Silently, the Honey Badgers closed their eyes in respect. It was a yearly tradition for them, but an important one nonetheless. It was a time for sorrow and joy, a time to remember the squadmates they had lost along the way, and all the good times they had spent together in their little family.

"I honor Scott Everett," Al continued, setting his candle beside a scratched engagement ring, "for his strength and fortitude. He gave up everything to save his wife and children, and even his own life was not enough to save them. But his selflessness will never be forgotten, and his family will forever rest in peace, their torment ended and their deaths avenged. We made it so."

"Serge honors Caroline Smith," said Serge. Gripping the candle between two beefy fingers, he placed it down next to an electric guitar string looped through three feral chu teeth – a makeshift necklace. "She was…very good tiny chu hunter. Serge misses her rocking skills and insanity."

"I honor Ricky Malone." Kuri set her own candle by a pair of cracked glasses. "He was there for me whenever I went through a lapse…when I remembered what Chandler did to my family. The chus destroyed his family too, and he always knew exactly what to say to make me feel better."

"I honor Jake Linneman." Placing her candle down, Allie lifted Trogdor's pilot light and touched the tiny flame to the wick, illuminating Jake's old baseball bat. When Linda and Tammy had joined the PVCC, she had immediately given the only remnant of the dead Jerkop's existence back to his squad. "For being one of my best friends and making me feel like part of the team."

"I honor Amanda Taylor." Nate held out a candle that he had set inside one of Amanda's 40mm grenades – hollowed out and defused into a harmless shell. "She saved my little brother's life and the lives of half of the people in this room. Without her, we wouldn't have made it out of the Abyss. I haven't know her as long as any of you, but I'm glad I was there when she was alive."

"We honor Zoey Francesca," said Steve and SUZI together. The LIESA unit had selected a much more somber voice pattern for the occasion, to avoid ruining the mood. Waddling forward, she reached inside her head and withdrew a candle for Steve to light, then hovered over to the shrine and set it beside the last surviving possession of Zoey's – a self-portrait of her, Al, and Steve sitting together on a bench at the ruins of Piedmont College. Steve, however, did not continue. There was simply nothing more that needed to be said about the incredible sacrifice that Zoey had made for her squad, and her unyielding courage that she had displayed even to the end.

"And we honor Matt Clark." Jexis and Kevin finished simultaneously. Matt's candle had been placed by a pair of objects – a lighter and an old mall cop badge from his days working at the Shopping Center with Kevin and Jake. Wordlessly, Jexis picked up the lighter and lit the wick.

"I love you so much, Matt," she murmured, fighting back tears. "I'll always love you, no matter what. I'm going to keep fighting and fighting for you, because I know you're watching. And once the war's over, I'm going to go to medical school so I can keep saving peoples' lives. We've lost enough. I lost you, Matt. I'm never going to forget you…and Matt…I love you."

"Matt," Kevin continued, placing an arm around the blond girl's shoulders as she cried quietly. "I know you're there. I know you can see what I've been doing. And you know damn well why I'm doing this, buddy." He reached out and placed a finger on Matt's badge. "For you. You gave me a purpose, Matt. I know what I have to do now, and everything that happens from here on out is my way of saying…thank you, Matt. Thank you for showing me a way to the end. Thank you for helping me when I needed help the most. But most of all…thank you for being my friend."

Kuri stepped forward and took a deep breath. Her eyes were red with tears, but after a few false starts, she managed to speak the last words of the ceremony – an Arcean prayer very dear to her.

"May Cresselia take you to lands unknown," the young woman whispered. "May Giratina be kind to you. May Dialga and Palkia never stop you…from finding our home with Arceus."

"Amen," said Al, and raised his head. "Everyone…I just want to thank you all. For everything that you've done and everything that you've been through. Honey Badgers…thank you."

"No. Thank _you_, Al," replied Steve, and patted the Manajerk's shoulder. "We wouldn't be here without you. We wouldn't have come this far. We wouldn't have this opportunity for revenge."

"Hell fucking yes." The Legend pulled his old friend in close, and for a moment, Steve and Al embraced. "Christian Love Day 2009. That's when the hammer falls on 14 Brunchville Lane."

"Speaking of which…" Al grinned and reached for the remote control to the barracks TV. "Who wants to see what our favorite little family got for CWC-mas?"

A groan spread through the seven other Honey Badgers, accompanied by Marty, who had just emerged from the sleeping quarters in his red pajamas. Ignoring the complaints of his squad, the Legend turned on the TV to FQX, then switched over to UMP-TV for the annual _A Very Sonichu Christmas with the Sonichu Family_ program. Much like "Bad Movie Night", this was an annual tradition for the Honey Badgers – forcing themselves to watch how the "other half" of CWCville lived. This year, however, the Jerkops had an ulterior motive for generating so much rage.

And come February 24th, that rage would finally have an outlet.

"…_and we're about to go live to 14 Brunchville Lane right now!"_ announced a voiceover as the sickeningly repulsive last panel of the unfinished _Sonichu #11_ comic scrolled up the screen._ "As you all know, the Sonichu family just loves to share their joy with the city of CWCville, which is why we've been given such a special opportunity to bring you such a special, special moment."_

"_YAY! PWESENTS!" _shrieked a trio of high-pitched voices as the rec room of 14 Brunchville Lane appeared on the screen. Sonichu and Rosechu stood by the fireplace, watching with pride as Cera, Christine, and Robbie waddled toward an immense pile of gifts wrapped in pink, purple, yellow, and battery-blue. The Roseys toddled along steadily, but so great was the eager Sonee's haste that he tripped over his own feet three times in the seven foot journey to the mountain of presents. Even Kevin was sickened by the idea of the three spoiled larvae being lavished with such undoubtedly expensive gifts that they would most likely never use at all. He found himself wishing for the pile to collapse on top of them and snuff out their lives forever.

"_Open your presents, darlings!"_ Rosechu cooed in a repulsively saccharine voice. _"You have been such good little children this year; look at all the wonderful gifts that Santa gave you!"_

"_YAY! WE WUV YOU SANNA CWAWS!"_

"_Daddeeeeeeeeeeee,"_ Robbie whined, drawing out the last syllable for what seemed like an eternity to the Honey Badgers. He was pawing at a massive box with his little stubs in a frantic attempt to tear open the wrapping paper. _"Dis pwesent's too haaaaaaawd fow me ta opwen!"_

"_Don't worry partner; someday you will be strong enough to open them yourself!"_ Sonichu knelt down, ruffled his son's soft headspikes, and tore open the paper to reveal a big Lego Police Station set. The Sonee's shrill squeals of joy nearly blew out the TV's speakers then and there.

"_YAY! TANK YOU, DADDEE! YAY! YAY!"_

Allie glanced at Kevin. "Holy fuck. You went through all that…" Her voice trailed off as she hugged the Jerkop tightly. Kevin hugged her back, glad that at least he didn't have to attend the horrible ceremony of greed and excess from the Sonichu family. He was here, with his friends, and a small pile of well-intentioned presents was a million times more special than the massive load of gifts that Sonichu, Rosechu, and the Combo had heaped upon the Sonee and two Roseys.

By now, Christine had somehow managed to tear open a little package with her stubs, revealing a brand new tortoiseshell mirror with a custom grip made for armstubs. Smiling smugly, she tossed away her old mirror like a piece of trash and admired herself in the new one, then waddled to the next present and began whining at Rosechu to open it for her. Cera had already opened all of her presents – a set of cookie cutters shaped like the Chaotic Combo, a Rosey-sized rolling pin, and a tiny cast iron frying pan that looked like it could only hold a single hamburger at best…a single White Castle hamburger. Not surprisingly, she couldn't even lift it with both armstubs.

Robbie, meanwhile, was plunging through present after present, cheering and screaming with joy as Sonichu unwrapped each one and presented it to the little Sonee. A copy of _Elebits_ for the Nintendo DS, _Animal Crossing _and_ Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games_ for the Wii, and a brand new pair of little blue plastic running shoes were all met with the same overly enthusiastic yet arrogant excitement, as if Robbie had known that he would always get exactly what he'd wanted, no matter how he behaved. Kevin knew that it wasn't just true…it was Robbie's creed.

As each new gift burst free of its colorful wrapping paper, another wave of fiery anger surged through Kevin's heart. There were people starving out in the cold, freezing in the streets and alleys of the Slum District, Sunnyside, the Factory District, and across all of CWCville. Yet still the family continued their celebration of excess, cheering their great fortune and privilege with every "YAY!" from the children and every saccharine word of praise from their parents.

Finally, an immense heap of wrapping paper lay strewn about the base of the Christmas tree, and only three presents remained – three boxes, each about the size of a microwave, wrapped in pink, purple, and yellow. These had to be Sonichu and Rosechu's big presents, the featured presents, the ones that would no doubt be the ultimate displays of 'affection' from the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon to their hideous, spoiled children. Kevin knew what they were already, but refrained from telling any of his squadmates. Al and Steve needed them all as angry as possible for Operation Hedgeclipper. Without that anger, all the pain and suffering would be for nothing.

"_Go on, partner!"_ Sonichu encouraged Robbie, though the tiny Sonee was already struggling with the bow. His armstubs just weren't meant for grasping things…in fact, it wasn't really clear what they were for at all aside from pushing him up when he tripped. _"Come on, open it!"_

"_You can do it, darlings,"_ crooned Rosechu to Cera and Christine. The former had somehow managed to tangle a ribbon around her own neck, and the latter was whacking her present with the end of her mirror. Unfortunately for every human in CWCville, Cera failed to strangle herself when Rosechu finally extricated her and unwrapped both of the Roseys' presents. Robbie, seeing that his sisters were being assisted, promptly gave up and whined, upon which Sonichu instantly undid the wrapping paper to reveal the final, despicable gift of the Sonichu children.

"_YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY! WE WUV YOU, MOMMEE AN DADDEE!"_

"What the FUCK?!" shouted Al, Steve, and Kuri simultaneously as three tiny go-karts, colored in pink, purple, and yellow, appeared from their cardboard boxes. Kevin still couldn't believe it. He hadn't believed it when Sonichu had told him at Christine's play, and he hadn't believed it when Rosechu had told him at the party on the 21st, but there they were, all three of them. The larvae were absolutely ecstatic, waddling around in circles, squealing and shrieking with utter glee, and attempting to pull their fat, dense little bodies onto the karts. They couldn't even get in the seats without the aid of their parents.

"Enough torture, tiny weak men!" Serge slammed his fist down on the table in the center of the room, rattling a collection of 48 shot glasses that had been divided into three sections – one each for himself, Al, and Steve. Each one represented a different member of the squad – Jack Daniels for Al, Bailey's for Jake, vodka for Serge, and so on. "Is time for Honey Badger Shots! DRINK UP, COWARDS! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"

"WOO!" Kuri gave Steve a fist bump as the blond Jerkop and the Legend hurried over to the table, after switching off the horrors on the TV, of course. "Good luck getting past Jolly Old Satan Nick! That's got tequila and Break You Dead!" She paused and sniffed the air, then dashed off without another word to check on the makeshift wood stove she had been using to cook the Honey Badgers' Christmas dinner for later that evening.

"JAKE SHOT FIRST! JAKE SHOT FIRST! JAKE SHOT FIRST!" chanted Jexis, Nate, and SUZI as one by one, each of the three contestants grabbed the shot glass of Bailey's and downed it in a single gulp. Steve's jaw was set, Al hadn't budged, and Serge…well, no one could really tell with Serge. After a minute to collect themselves, they simultaneously reached for the next glass – the Amanda shot with rum and cinnamon for an explosive combo.

Over at the stove, Kuri hastily pulled on a pair of oven mitts and carefully slid a tray into of the crackling flames. She smiled as the rich scent of chestnuts, mushrooms, and perfectly cooked meat began wafting out of the door, and fanned the smell toward her nose.

"How's _that_ for gourmet, guys?" she asked, glancing at Luxo and Aldo. The Lunatone pulsed once in indifference, while her Murkrow ruffled his feathers hungrily and let out a loud "KAW!" What lay before them in the oven was a single plump homebred Sonee that Kuri had captured in a pre-Christmas raid and stored in a cooler full of ice and snow. Alive. Two days later, she had removed the not-quite-dead-but-too-frozen-to-move baby chu and skinned it…also alive…then rubbed a layer of course sea salt into its raw flesh. What remained of the tortured and prepared Sonee had been folded over a mixture of chopped chestnuts and button mushrooms, then seasoned with a rub and wrapped in pastry dough to create a Chu Wellington. It was the single most difficult dish that Kuri had ever tried to make with chu meat, and certainly the fanciest.

Over by the converted oil drum and brickwork that served as a fireplace, Sugarplum Fury lay curled up in Frank's coils, snug and warm and dozing while the Arbok helped itself to a bowl of miniature "thumb" Sonees and Roseys that Al and Steve had slaughtered and stuffed with a vitamin mix. It was the only way to get Kevin's formerly-malnourished Pokémon the vital nutrients he needed, and so far, Frank was looking much healthier than he had been when the Jerkop had encountered him. Training him had been a long and arduous process, but with a great deal of help from Kuri, the Arbok had quickly adapted to life under its new master.

"How you doing, buddy?" Kevin asked, petting Frank's scaly head as he and Allie sat down to warm up by the fire beside the massive snake Pokémon. He chuckled as the Arbok snatched a tiny dead Rosey in its jaws and swallowed it whole. "Well, _someone's_ enjoying himself!"

"He's not the only one, you know." Allie wrapped a blanket around herself and Kevin, snuggling in close together while the fire crackled before them. "Two more months, Kevin. That's all."

Kevin smiled and hugged her. It had been too long…far too long. "I've got a present for you!"

"Really?" The young woman smiled. "Come on, let's open it! Where is it?"

"Right here." Kevin reached behind Frank and handed over a long, very heavy package. "I know you wanted to be a firefighter, so I thought…why the hell not?"

"Oh, Arceus!" Allie tore open her present, reached in, and emerged grasping a wicked-looking fire axe. Kevin had found it on a trip through the abandoned zone that had led his squad into the district's fire station. It had been too good of a present to not save for later. Allie dropped the axe and hugged him, laughing with joy. "Thank you! Thank you so much, Kevin! It's beautiful!"

"Glad you like it," Kevin replied happily.

"I got you a present too," continued the Jerkop as she passed him a box the size of a large book, wrapped in shiny red paper. "I found it in a Poké Mart a few weeks before you joined up. I've just been holding on to it for a while, but now that you've got Frank, I think it's better with you."

Intrigued, Kevin undid the bow slowly and peeled apart the wrapping paper to reveal a Pokédex, a _real_ Pokédex. Memories of the years before Occupation Day swept through him, drawing him back to a time when the one thing he'd wanted to be was a Pokémon trainer. And after so many years of having his dreams crushed by Chandler and the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, after going to hell and back, after losing Matt, Jake, Zoey, Amanda, Frank, and so many of his dear friends and comrades, he finally had a Pokémon and a Pokédex of his own.

"Now you've got everything you need," Allie whispered, hugging him as he studied the device.

"What the hell are you talking about?" Kevin asked, and drew her in close. "I already did." His fingers brushed her hair aside, feeling the smoothness where the undamaged skin gave way to her old burn mark. He'd only seen her without it a couple of times, back in 1998, a full ten years ago. Back before the occupation and Sonichu and the Chaotic Combo and all the rest of the despicable chus and their hideous little demon spawn, and all the killing and all the hatred and all the pain and sadness and misery and death. Back when he'd still been a lost teen, peacefully making his way in CWCville.

"You remember when I didn't have it, don't you?" Allie asked, reading his mind as she slid her fingers down from Kevin's fingertips to his wrist, then clasped his hand. "Does it bother you?"

"No," he answered, and reached up to draw her even closer. "You're beautiful."

Before he knew it, their lips touched, and it was as if the world had suddenly become clear again.

"Merry Christmas, Kevin," murmured Allie when they finally broke apart.

Kevin smiled. "Merry Christmas, Allie."


	18. Chapter 13: End of the Line

**CWCollateral: A Tale of the Resistance**

**by Manajerkop**

* * *

**Chapter 13: End of the Line**

**February 24, 2009, west CWCville, subdivisions, 14 Brunchville Lane, 6:30 p.m., Christian Love Day**

Sonichu and Rosechu stood hand in hand by the window, gazing out at the silent, snow-covered city beyond their house. It had been a peaceful evening, and the children were all playing with Heather in the living room to give the lovehogs a well-earned bit of free time to spend in each other's company. Rosechu knew it had been a long, hard, stressful day of dealing with the remnants of the shattered PVCC, but in the end, three jerk traitors had been captured due to her hubby-bolt's heroics. Bubbles was probably helping to un-brainwash them right now.

"Isn't it wonderful, heartsweet?" Sonichu sighed wistfully. "The very first Christian Love Day in history. At last, Father is finally free to continue his Love Quest. Mary Lee Walsh is safely behind bars; she will not stop him from finding a nice boyfriend-free girl anymore!"

"Oh, how wonderful!" replied Rosechu. "And after all these years of stress, too!"

"Yeah!" Sonichu pulled her in for a kiss. "I hope he finds someone as pretty as you, Rosey."

"Perdone me, Señor Sonichu," Heather Iglesias walked into the room with Cera, Christine, and Robbie all waddling after her and babbling about trivial things that only they cared about. She held out Sonichu's cell phone, which was ringing and playing "Oops!... I Did It Again".

"Thanks Heather!" Sonichu accepted the phone. "Father! How goes your Sweetheart Search?"

_"Well, uh, Sonichu, tha…city of CWCville needs y…I need you ta help me with tha stress…"_

"Oh boy! What is it, Father? Bank robbery? Fire? Jewel thieves?"

_"Dose, dose dirty Jerkop homos just…dey just…OOOOOHHHHH!" _screamed Chris in helpless rage, and sighed loudly. _"Dey broke into tha CWCville Hospital an' DEY'RE KILLIN' THA WIDDLE BAY-BEES! You gotta z…uh…zap to tha extreme an' save tha day!"_

"You are absolutely right, Father; I'm on my way!"

_"Good, uh, thank you very mu…thank you very much, Sonichu, for helping with tha, uh, tha stress."_ Chris panted and took deep breaths. The outburst had completely sapped his energy. _"Now I gotta…Julie's on tha other, uh, phone an' we're…uh…we're just talkin' about…stuff…"_

"Okay, Father! I'll have those dirty trolls all rounded up in no time!" Sonichu clicked off the phone and handed it back to Heather. "I'll be back once I deal with those dirty jerks. Take care, Rosey!" He knelt down and patted each of the children on their soft headspikes. "See ya, kids!"

"Bye-bye, Daddee!" replied Robbie, Cera, and Christine simultaneously. "We wuv you!"

"Well then, it's time to zap! I'm off to save the day!" Sonichu dashed out the door and up the street, speeding toward downtown CWCville as fast as lightning. Rosechu, Heather, and the kids waved goodbye until the blur had vanished into the distance, then walked back to the kitchen.

"Who's ready for dinner?" Rosechu asked enthusiastically.

"YAY!" screeched the three little chus, hopping up and down with excitement. Heather winced as the children's loud, high-pitched exclamations hurt her ears, but she smiled along with them.

"Wat awe we gonna hawve fow dinner, Mommmmmmeeeeeeee?" asked Cera, and rubbed her tummy hungrily as Rosechu picked up the three babies and set them on the counter one by one.

"Fried chicken, onion rings, and donuts!" replied Rosechu, and bent down to retrieve the big deep fryer from the cupboard beneath the counter. "It's a holiday! Do you know what today is?"

"Chwistmas!" squealed Robbie, even though Christmas had been just two months ago.

"My biwfday!" guessed Christine, gleefully anticipating another barrage of presents just for her.

"Chwistian Wuv Day!" replied Cera with a smug smirk.

"Very smart, Cera!" Rosechu smiled down at her daughter and patted her soft headspikes. "And because it's Christian Love Day, we're having a special Christian Love Day dinner tonight!"

"YAY! WE WUV CHWISTIAN WUV DAY!"

_Ding dong!_

Rosechu turned around in surprise. Could her hubby-bolt already be home so soon? Well, she was too busy to go answer the door, and anyway, her hands were full. She turned to the nanny. "Heather, would you go see who that is? I need to make dinner for the kids."

"Si, Señora Rosechu." Heather obediently stepped out of the room to greet their unexpected guests. There was a creak of hinges, and a few muffled voices and laughter. No doubt someone was here to see Heather. Maybe it was a new boyfriend asking her out on a date. Maybe she'd decided to start living a good, _straight_ life after all, instead of continuing her immoral homo life.

Smiling vacantly, Rosechu turned back to her children. "How was school today, Cera?"

"I didn't wike it 'cuz Kevin was sick!" whined the pink Rosey. "Dat's not faiwr! Jewish fowk don't _get_ sick! He's my fwiend and he's sposed ta_awways_ be dere ta pway wif meeeeeeeeeee!"

"Well, maybe he's just stressed," suggested Rosechu. "Your Grandpa Chris sometimes has to call in sick when those nasty trolls give him lots of stress. Anyway, you still have your friends and your brother and sister, don't you? Roseys use their cuteness to make lots of friends!"

Cera tried to remember if she'd ever had any other friends at school besides Kevin. The human children didn't want anything to do with her, and the other homebred Sonees and Roseys in Mrs. Lyra's class were always too busy listening to Christine talk about how pretty she was or else watching Robbie run around in circles and brag about how fast he was getting. They didn't pay enough attention to her as they were supposed to, and that ground Cera's gears something fierce.

"Kevin's my fwiend," she stated stubbornly, and folded her armstubs. "He's my _Jewish_ fwiend, an he's gonna get bettewr so dat he can pway wif me an bake cookees wif me an tewl me dat…"

"…that you're a good little Rosey?" asked Kevin Shaw as he stepped into the kitchen in full combat gear, accompanied by Steve, who in turn was accompanied by Sugarplum Fury. Behind them stood Nate, Allie, Serge, and Jexis, all armed to the teeth and glaring at Rosechu and her children with the purest and most inconceivable hatred that any of the four chus had ever seen.

"Drop the larvae," ordered Steve as he raised Origin and drew back the black revolver's hammer with a sinister metallic _click_, "and KISS THE FUCKING FLOOR, ROSECHU."

A second passed, its silence broken only by the metallic clatter of assault rifles, submachine guns, Origin, Trogdor, and Baba Yaga being raised to fire. Then came the screaming.

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" bawled Cera, Christine, and Robbie, their reptilian eyes wide with terror as they clung to their mother as tightly as their little armstubs would allow them.

"OH GOD! GODJESUS! NO! HEATHER!" shrieked Rosechu as she frantically gathered all three of the children into her arms. Steve nodded to Allie and Nate, who obediently circled around through the living room to cut off the last avenue of escape for the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. "HEATHER, WHERE ARE YOU?! HELP US! SAVE MY BABIES!"

"Lo siento, Señora Rosechu," the Hispanic nanny chuckled as she appeared from the front hall with Kuri standing by her side. "Lo siento…your guests were _muy_ persuasive."

"NO!" Rosechu shook her head, as if trying to deny the bitter truth that stood before her. Heather had always been so kind, so caring, so responsible, cleaning up after Robbie whenever he tripped and fell or lost control of his bowels, brushing Christine's fur and telling her she was the prettiest Rosey in the world, teaching Cera to fold laundry and cook like a good mommy, and watching the kids whenever Sonichu and Rosechu needed time to themselves or else were busy helping out at the Mayor's office. She knew the family so well! She would never betray the creations of the man who had made it a punishable crime for her to seek out her sinful homosexual love! And it was her _job_ to make sure that the children never endured anything of the stressful sort. It was _her _fault that these trolls had entered their house!

Heather laughed bitterly. "Si, Señora Rosechu. Si." She turned to Kuri and muttered a few words to her in Spanish. The Jerkop burst out laughing, then stepped forward and whispered something to Steve. However, the Manajerk was more focused on the fuzzy little blobs squirming around in their mother's grasp than on whatever Kuri had said. However, a tiny smile crossed his face.

"Calm down now, Rosechu," Steve said gently, and held out his arms in a peaceful gesture. "We don't want to hurt anyone. Just put down your kids and we'll talk. It's easy. Easy as pie."

"YOU STAY AWAY FROM MY BABIES, TROLL!" yelled Rosechu, hugging them against her chest. "MY HUBBY-BOLT WILL BE BACK ANY SECOND NOW TO SAVE ME!"

"I wike pie…" Robbie sniffled absentmindedly. All the stress was making him hungry and tired.

A vein pulsed in the Manajerk's forehead at the Sonee's words. "Rosechu, there aren't a lot of good ways this can end. If you keep resisting us, your kids'll be in one hell of a pickle."

"NO!" Rosechu's eyes began to turn red. "You will not take the fruits of my womb from me! I am the warrior of supreme gender equality! I AM WOMAN! I HAVE THE POWER!"

"You're a horrible mother and an embarrassment to every women's rights movement in history," snarled Jexis. "You face-raped Howell and helped your husband and Chandler murder thousands of innocents. You're no woman. You're no feminist crusader. You're a _monster_."

"Dat's not twoo! Mommee's da bestest mommee in da wowld, 'cuz she's OWR mommee!" yelled Cera while Robbie and Christine whined and sobbed next to her. All the while, Rosechu's eyes grew redder and redder with fury, and her headspikes began to prickle up like an immense mane. She continued backing up further and further as Steve cautiously advanced, until she was standing just in front of the stairway leading to the basement.

"We're prepared to let you go if you give us the children," suggested Steve with a convincingly straight face. "Chandler would do the same if he had kids. Don't you want to be like Father?"

"THE ALMIGHTY UTERUS IS MINE TO COMMAND!" growled Rosechu, not listening at all. "YOU OF THE INFERIOR CHROMOSOMES CANNOT HOPE TO SILENCE ME!"

Steve nodded and smiled. "Right. You have fun with that." He raised a hand. "Get 'em."

Without a word, Allie and Nate lunged from behind Rosechu like cobras striking their prey, snatching Robbie and Cera out of her grasp before she knew what had happened.

"WAAAAAHHHHH! MOMMEEEEE!" the little chus cried, struggling and kicking helplessly as they were cruelly torn from their mother's embrace. "MOMMEEEEEE! HEWWWWWWP!"

"ROBBIE! CERA! NOOOOO!" Fiery rage flashed across Rosechu's face as she held Christine even more tightly. Whirling around, she shot a glare of pure loathing at Steve and unzipped her dress with her free hand. As the Jerkops watched in horror, she stripped bare in front of them, all while clutching the crying purple Rosey. Dense fur sprouted all over her chest and groin to shield her lady parts from view, while razor-sharp claws grew quickly from her fingers.

"I AM THE HARBINGER OF BLOODY MENSTRUAL DOOM!" the Incredible Lioness roared in a berserk fit of pseudo-feminist rage. "THE STRENGTH AND INDOMITABLE SPIRIT OF MY CERVIX AND FALLOPIAN TUBES WILL PROTECT THE DEFENSELESS AND BELOVED CHILDREN WHO HAVE EMERGED FROM MY GLORIOUS WOMB! YOUR EVIL CANNOT STAND AGAINST THE SUPREMACY OF ESTROGEN! YOUR HATRED WILL NOT STIFLE MY FURIOUS OVARIES! I AM WOMAN! HEAR ME RO-"

_HONNNNNNNNKKKKK! HONNNNNNNNNNNKKKKK!_

_CRASH! CRUNCH!_ In less than a second, the pink demon was gone, hurled down into the basement as the Battle Bus smashed straight through the side of 14 Brunchville Lane and plowed into her with its front-mounted battering ram. Kevin could hear the body bouncing and rolling all the way down the stairs, as well as Christine's screams of pain…_and_ _something_ _else_.

"GRRROWR!" roared Sugarplum Fury, appropriately finishing Rosechu's sentence for her.

"They'll be fine, Sugar," the Legend muttered as he stepped out of the Battle Bus with SUZI hovering beside his shoulder. "You can eat later. Steve, keep her on a leash for this, got it?"

"Guys…" Steve's voice trembled with excitement as Nate handed him the struggling, weeping Robbie. A small stream of urine began trickling out of the terrified Sonee's crotch flap, but the Jerkop paid it no heed in his moment of pride. "This is it. We're here. We're actually _doing_ it."

"Don't celebrate just yet," said Al, and patted his friend on the back. "Right. You all know the drill. Emily and the Picklemen won't be able to keep Sonichu occupied for more than an hour or two. Kevin, are you _absolutely_ _sure_ you set up those cameras correctly at Christmas?"

"Positive." Kevin smiled. "It's gonna be one hell of a show. Tell Vivian to start recording."

Al picked up his walkie-talkie. "Remnant Five, Remnant Five, Honey Badger Command, come in. Operation Hedgeclipper is in effect. I say again, Operation Hedgeclipper is in effect."

_"Ledger?" _There was a sharp intake of breath from the other end of the line as Vivian Gee turned on the camera feeds and saw what had become of Sonichu and Rosechu's house. _"I…I... C-c-copy and confirm, Honey Badger Command. All callsigns, this is Remnant Five. Operation Hedgeclipper is in effect. Operation Hedgeclipper is in effect. We have a confirmed breach of 14 Brunchville Lane. The Honey Badgers are inside the house and have captured the children and Rosechu, repeat, THE HONEY BADGERS HAVE THE SONICHU CHILDREN."_

"Damn right we do," chuckled Steve, and began tenderly stroking Robbie's headspikes as the tiny Sonee blubbered in fear. "Now the question is…what do we do with these fat little fucks?"

"You wet me goooooo!" shouted Cera as she tugged at Allie's fingers. When that didn't work, she started thrashing around, as if the Rosey honestly believed she could somehow squeeze her chubby body loose from the young woman's grasp. "WAAAHHH! I WANT MY MOMMEE!"

"I'm afraid that's no longer an option, Cera," sighed the Legend in a voice laden with false regret. "You and your sister Christine have been two bad little Roseys, and your brother Robbie's been a bad little Sonee. And you know what happens to bad little Sonees and Roseys?"

"No, ima good widdle Wosey!" Cera stared at Al with an expression somewhere between stubborn defiance and smug self-assurance. "My mommy's da owiginal Wosechu an she says ima good widdle Wosey, 'cuz…uh…you'we a diwtee…wying…_homow_! Stawp wying, twoll!"

"Bad little Sonees and Roseys get _punished_," finished Al with a sinister chuckle.

Cera let out a piercing scream. Without warning, she jerked her disproportionately heavy body around in Allie's hands and, defying all expectations, managed to pull herself out of the Jerkop's grip. She plopped to the kitchen floor with a squeal and immediately waddled for the front door, stumbling and tottering back and forth on her underdeveloped stumpfeet. If she could just get to Sonichu in time and show him what a good, responsible Rosey she was, he'd give her all sorts of wonderful presents and tell her she was so smart for running away so the trolls couldn't get her!

"WAAAAAAAHHHHH! DADDDDDEEEEEEEEE!" she shrieked. "SAYVE MEEEEEEE!"

"YAY! Go Cewah!" Robbie cried happily, clapping his stubs together as he watched his sister valiantly abandoning him. In his naïve little mind, she was going to get Sonichu and bring him right home so he could rescue Robbie and make all the stress go away. The mean troll Jerkops would all be punished and sent to jail for being bad, and then his father would pat him on the head and give him some candy and tell his little partner that he'd been such a brave little Sonee. Robbie let out a sigh of relief and closed his eyes happily. If he waited long enough and hoped _really_ hard for Daddy to come back, everything would sort itself out, just like it always did.

Unfortunately for both of the larvae, Cera only made it about five feet before being caught again.

"That wasn't very nice to run away like that, Cera," commented Kevin as he reached down and snatched up the wailing Rosey by the back of her little blue shirt. "Did you forget Robbie? You weren't going to leave your helpless little brother _alone_ with us, were you?" He flashed her a wicked grin and lifted her up to show the Sonee, who could only stare at Cera in utter confusion.

"Wobbiiiieeee…" Cera whined, attempting to talk her way out of the stressful situation. "I didn't weeve…I was…I was gonna get Daddee ta sayve us! Dey're twolls! Dey're wying! WAAHH!"

"That's right, Robbie," Steve added, smiling as the pieces of Kevin's cruel plan began to fall into place. "Cera _says_ she was going to get Daddy to save you. Only problem is, Daddy's _really _far away right now because he's busy zapping to the extreme and saving the day. Cera can't run as fast as you, so she was going to leave you here to save herself. But that's not what _you_ would've done! _You_ would've run fast and zapped to the extreme and saved the day, just like Daddy!"

"YEAH!" squealed Robbie, puffing up his chest in triumph at the Jerkop's praise. Seconds later, the smug grin on his face died as he finally realized what Steve had meant. It was true. Cera _had_ left him alone to die! But that wasn't right! That wasn't what his sister was supposed to do in a stressful situation like this! She was supposed to take care of everything, not run away and save herself instead of looking after him! He was her baby brother, a helpless, innocent little Sonee! It couldn't be true. She just wanted to take care of him, like always! She had a plan to save him!

Meanwhile, Cera's stunted mind was on the verge of implosion. For the first time in her life, Robbie was looking at her with an expression of shock, betrayal, and even hints of hatred. She hadn't done anything wrong! She was the oldest child, and it was her responsibility to run away and save herself so that Daddy would give her candy and treats for being so brave and standing up to the big mean Jerkops! It wasn't as if they were going to murder their captives. Babies and heroines never died in movies or on TV, so Cera knew that Rosechu and Christine and Robbie would have been all right. But why couldn't her brother understand? She was trying _so hard_!

"It's…it's da _stwess_!" she squeaked, deflecting any actualresponsibility onto her grandfather's most beloved scapegoat after trolls and homos. "Dey made me stwessed, so it's dere fawlt!

"Why were you gonna weeve meeeeeeee?" bawled Robbie, tears streaming from his eyes as his entire perception of his sister was destroyed in a matter of seconds. Kevin's joy at feeling Cera squirm uncomfortably in his grasp was simply unrivaled. The horrid saccharine bond between the two siblings was shattering before his very eyes, and he was loving every millisecond of it. He could only hope that the upcoming horrendous physical torture would successfully hammer in the sheer magnitude of Cera's betrayal to both herself and her brother.

"Well, I'll leave you to think about what Cera did to you, Robbie," he announced gleefully, and tucked the baby chu under an arm as she wailed and cried. "Let's go, little Rosey. Time to play."

Cera moaned and began beating the side of Kevin's chest with her useless stubs. Not even the word "play" had managed to distract her. Jexis and Sugarplum Fury followed him as he hurried down the stairs and stepped over Rosechu and Christine's twitching bodies.

"And that's one," announced Al from back in the kitchen. "Steve, if you even _think_ about…"

"Don't you worry," replied Steve, and lifted the weeping, shuddering Robbie up to eye level. "The narcissist's all yours. Trust me. I'm more than happy with the card I've been dealt."

"Wet me go you big mean pywat jewk!" screamed the Sonee as he snapped back to his wannabe hero persona and began kicking his stumpfeet in midair in a pathetic attempt to waddle away from the Jerkop. If Cera had escaped the trolls, then he could too! "Daddee's gonna wescue me, an you'wl be in big twouble wen I tewl him wat you did ta Mommee an Chwistine!"

Steve chuckled evilly. "Oh, we're gonna have _lots_ of fun tonight, aren't we, wittle Wobbie? What about Cera? We're going to give her lots of Prickly-Wicklies too! Don't you want Daddy to save her too? _Real_ heroes save _everyone_…even the ones who leave them to die."

"I…I…Cewah wan away!" Robbie yelled, his face flushed as he blustered on and on without any regard to what he was saying. "An Daddee an I awe gonna zap you awl an sayve Mommee!"

"What about Christine? Did you forget your shiny sister now?" asked Steve, relentlessly mind-fucking the Sonee right to the edge of his stress limit. Robbie almost had an aneurysm then and there from the sheer exertion of thinking so hard and trying to cope with the stress. It would only take one more traumatic event to push him over the edge, and Steve knew just where to get that.

"Don't let us keep you waiting," muttered Al as Kuri grinned evilly and began shaking up her bottle of Break You Dead while Allie busied herself with collecting Rosechu's discarded clothes. "You two can do whatever small things you want to Robbie for now, but as soon as we give the word, start going through the stuff we rehearsed." The Legend paused. "And…have fun."

Both Steve and Kuri instantly shot him a stare that said _You seriously needed to tell us that?_

"All right, then. Allie, Nate, secure the basement and make sure those two won't be escaping anytime soon." The Legend let out a shaky breath. "Christine's mine. No one kills her but me."

The pair of Jerkops nodded and quickly headed down the basement stairs, one after the other. Al remained in the kitchen for a few seconds, taking deep breaths as the reality of what he and his squad were about to do began to sink in. Below, he could hear Christine bawling and Rosechu's half-conscious moans as Allie and Nate grabbed them and dragged them out into the open. Robbie whimpered in Steve's grip, beating his tiny armstubs again and again against his captor's fingers while Kuri opened up the cupboard above the sink and retrieved a large glass jug, big enough to hold a Sonee. She offered it to Steve, who dumped the struggling baby chu inside.

"You okay, Al?" asked the blond Jerkop as Robbie screamed and tried to pull himself out of his prison with his static cling. Unfortunately for the Sonee, he wasn't nearly as strong as his father always told him he was. This predictably led to Robbie simply giving up on the entire plan and resorting to pounding the unyielding glass with his armstubs while attempting to kick it as well.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'll be fine," muttered Al, and stepped back into the Battle Bus to retrieve a few certain items. The "shiny kit", as he'd christened it, was right where he'd left it. It was simply a plastic toolbox filled with an electric shaver, a straight razor, a pair of tweezers, a plastic bag full of rock salt, a Zippo lighter, a small bottle of lemon juice, and a roll of duct tape. There were two much more imposing tools beside it – a wooden baseball bat which had two dozen nails hammered through the business end at many different angles, and a brand new pair of stainless steel hedge clippers. With the box of goodies tucked under one arm and the nail bat and shears under the other, he gave Steve and Kuri a last nod of approval and turned to Heather and Serge.

"You did the right thing, Miss Iglesias," the Legend addressed the Sonichu family's former nanny. "But this place isn't safe anymore. The EHPF are gonna come down on everyone with ties to these little brats, including you. We can offer you sanctuary as a civilian liason."

Heather hugged him tearfully. "Si. Si. Muchas gracias, Señor Ledger. Vaya con Arceus."

"It's okay. It's okay," muttered Al as Serge gently pried Heather loose and ushered her toward the Battle Bus. "Wait inside until we're finished. Serge, go with her and watch for Sparkies."

"Whewe awe you goin, Nannee Heathewr?" Robbie pressed his pudgy face against the glass and sobbed, waving frantically to his former nanny as she boarded the vehicle without looking back once. "Don't weeve me awone wif da big mean pewsons! NO! NOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO! WAAAAHHHH! WAAAAAHHH! I WANT NANNEE HEATHEWR! WAAAAAAAHHHH!"

"Do you _ever_ stop whining?" asked Steve, and flicked the Sonee right in his tiny blob of a nose with a single finger. Robbie squealed and scrunched up his face, concentrating as hard as he could on channeling a big heroic electric shock. He could feel the energy building inside him, surging through his cheekspots like the tingly feeling he sometimes felt in his pickle when he played with Cera and Christine in the bathtub or when he'd accidentally waddled in on Sonichu and Rosechu doing their naked wrestling game in bed. This was it! He was finally going to prove how strong and brave he was by zapping all the evil Jerkops to the extreme, just like his father!

"DIE, TWOLL!" he shrieked, unleashing the biggest, most powerful bolt he'd ever conjured.

_Zzzap!_

Steve winced slightly as the weak Spark attack connected with his wrist with a sizzle, then ducked behind the counter, out of the Sonee's sight. Robbie opened his eyes and let out a smug, triumphant "YAY!", convinced that he'd just blasted the Jerkop right off the face of the earth with the sheer power and unbelievable strength of his mighty Thundershock…

"Oops," giggled Kuri as Steve rose up, towering over the Sonee like Cthulhu rising from the dark depths of R'lyeh. A sudden cold dread rushed through Robbie's pudgy body. No. It couldn't be true. How could this be possible? He was a strong, brave little baby, filled with spunk and speed and packing a lot of action! The big mean pirate had cheated! He must have cheated! There was no way that any troll could stand against Robbie Sonee, the son of the true and original Sonichu!

Steve grinned down at his captive. "Pathetic, Robbie. Now we're just gonna have to kill you."

Robbie shrieked in terror and immediately emptied his bowels and bladder into the jug.

Grinning, Kuri unrolled a sheet of plastic wrap and pressed it down over the opening, sealing the Sonee inside with an enormous load of his own filth. Soon, muffled coughs and screams began emanating from the befouled jar, as the horrible stench began striking back against its originator.

Al made his way across the kitchen and down the basement stairs, leaving Robbie to his horrible fate at the hands of the Jerkops. All the while, he could hear the baby chu shrieking, begging his captors to give him back his nanny because he needed someone to clean him up and give him a bath. Robbie still hadn't put together the fact that Heather had no intention of _ever_ coming back.

_Typical_ _homebreds_, the Legend thought to himself as he turned out of the stairway and found himself in the basement of 14 Brunchville Lane. It was exactly what he'd expected in a house designed and furnished via Christian Weston Chandler's CADD-enhanced skills: a small room with an ironing board and sewing machine on one side…obviously Rosechu's half. On the other side sat a large workbench and an array of sharp, blunt, serrated, and dangerous tools scattered all over it. A curious baby chu could have easily picked up any one of them. How Robbie, Cera, and Christine had avoided killing themselves by accident for so long was an utter mystery.

A blood trail on the concrete floor led to where Allie and Nate had dumped Rosechu's naked, battered body – right in the center of the basement. She had reverted back to her normal form, and there was no trace of the horrific pseudo-feminist rage-monster known as the Incredible Lioness lingering in her broken spirit. A few feet away, Christine was wriggling in Nate's grip, screaming and screaming while Allie cruelly yanked on her sensitive belly fur again and again.

"STAWP IT! STAAAAWWWWP IIIIIIITTTTT!" screeched the purple Rosey. Too preoccupied with trying to push Allie's fingers away, she didn't notice Al approaching from the stairs.

"Good job, you two," the Legend complimented his Jerkops, and placed the "shiny kit", the hedge clippers, and the nailed baseball bat down beside Rosechu. "Now let's get to work. First things first, hand me that ugly little mutant."

"I AM NOT UGWY! IMA PWETTY WOSEY!" yelled Christine in a mix of agony and rage.

"You're ugly, Christine," growled Al as he snatched the Rosey from Nate and pressed her flabby little body against the center of the nail bat, just below the business end, "Now hold still." He began rolling the duct tape around her torso, adhering her to the bat like a firing squad victim being tied to a pole. Christine wailed and writhed even harder to free herself from the sticky tape, but the Manajerk kept on winding and winding and winding until the Rosey's armstubs were pinned to her sides. She hung there, kicking and screaming like the spoiled brat she was, an unwilling participant in the horrible mutilation and murder of her own mother.

"Wakey wakey." Al dealt Rosechu a firm kick to her bare china with his boot. She shifted and let out a strangled moan. "Get up. Your little baby's got a surprise for you."

"Uhhhhgghhh…uhhhhh…Christine?" gasped Rosechu. Her eyes drifted open. Al simply turned and nodded to his Jerkops. Nate stepped forward and kicked the chu housewife right under the chin, sending her reeling back into Allie's waiting arms with a shocked cry of pain. The young woman immediately and forcibly pinned her down, pressing Rosechu against the cold concrete as she struggled and thrashed around just like her purple-furred daughter was doing on the bat.

Al tossed the hedge clippers to Nate. "You know what to do. Remember, we're on film."

"Absolutely." The sniper knelt down, grabbed one of Rosechu's hands, and forced her thumb between the steel blades. "Oh dear. Just _look_ at you. I'm gonna have to give you a manicure if you want to look all nice and pretty when your hubby-bolt gets back. Now hold still."

"NO! NO! GET AWAY FROM ME YOU DIRTY HOM-"

_SNIP!_

"AAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHH!"

_SNIP!_

"EEEEAAAAAUUUUGHGHHGGGH!"

One by one, Nate coldly clipped off all of Rosechu's fingers. By the time he tossed the bloodied hedge clippers aside and gathered all of the severed digits into a plastic bag, Rosechu's white gloves were now soaked in red and squirting into the growing pools of blood beneath each fingerless hand. Al stood silent and calm, gazing down at the wounded chu as she howled and shrieked in anguish. Eventually, her spasms died down, and were replaced by hoarse, muffled moans and weak shudders. Christine could only go on weeping and screaming, unable to tear her big blue eyes away from her naked and mutilated mother lying crumpled on the floor below.

"That was fun, wasn't it, wittle Chwistine?" cooed Al in a disgusting baby voice. Christine wailed again in terror. "Wait, what? Bash Mommy's head in?" He raised the bat and its occupant into the air. "But Mommy wuvs you _so much_! Are you _sure_ you want to do that, shiny Rosey?"

"WAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOO! STAAAAAWWWWWWWP!"

"CHRISTINE! BABY NO!" screamed Rosechu as Al positioned the nail bat and the squirming, squealing Rosey over her head. "CHRISTINE! NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

"MOMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEE! HEWP ME! HEWP MEEEEEEEE! WAAAAAAAHHHH!"

_CRUNCH! CRACK!_

"GGGGUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHHH!" Rosechu felt her nose break and her teeth shatter from the first impact alone. The nails tore at her lips and pierced her face, ripping a dozen bloody holes in her matted pink fur. Through swollen, bleeding eyes, she could see her daughter writhing against her tape cocoon, shrieking an awful high-pitched cry of anguish as the Legend raised her up for Nate and Allie to see what kind of damage he'd done.

Indeed, Christine had fared slightly better than Rosechu had after the crushing blow, but that had been Al's idea all along – for the spoiled little Rosey to not only helplessly watch her mother die, but to know and to realize that she had helped Al to murder Rosechu. Christine's purple fur was now stained with blood…her mother's blood. The blow had slammed her right against Rosechu – not hard enough to severely hurt her, but hard enough to give a more well-designed creature shaken infant syndrome. As it was, Christine's diminutive brain, like those of all Sonees and Roseys, was protected by a thick cushion of fat that had also saved her life during her sudden trip down the stairs. However, she had not escaped without injury. The skin around one of her crystal blue eyes was quickly turning dark and swollen – it had smacked against Rosechu's cheekbone.

"Right, then," growled the Manajerk. "You like that, you vapid whore? You Rosechus all like it rough, don't you? That…heh…that was just foreplay."

"Please…" gasped Rosechu as she struggled backward, thrashing against Allie and Nate's restraining hands. "Just let me…you can have Christine, just let me go back to my sweetbolt…"

Al raised the bat again. "Disgusting. You disgusting…despicable…_cunt_. You furfags really don't have a _single_ shred of empathy, do you? Not even for your own spawn. Well, I'm gonna force some out of you if I have to. So…why don't you tell Christine who her real daddy is, huh?"

"My weal Daddee's da twoo an owigi-"

"The grown-ups are talking, sweetie," said Allie, and drove her fist into Christine's plump belly.

"WAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" cried the purple Rosey, and began banging her head helplessly against the wooden bat. A rib had snapped, and the pain now burned in her torso like a hot iron poker, building up waves and waves of stress until Christine thought for sure she would die then and there. But no…she wasn't nearly so lucky. And the Jerkops hadn't even _started_ on her yet.

"Now tell her," growled Al. "Tell her the _truth_, you lying slut. Tell her where she came from."

"YAY!" Unbelievably, Christine's eyes filled with happy tears. She always loved it when Rosechu talked about her and how special her birth had been, how Sonichu had lifted her - a tiny, squealing purple fuzzball – out of her broken eggshell and hugged her with pride…so much pride at having brought such a pretty, special, shiny Rosey into the world.

"Christine…" gasped Rosechu. "Christine…"

"Tewl me da stowee, Mommee!" cried Christine with inexplicable joy. Her selfish larval mind had already forgotten everything about the Jerkops, her mother's injuries, the danger her siblings were in…even the burning sensation in her ribs. As long as she was the center of attention, nothing else mattered. She was a pretty Rosey, a unique and beautiful and shiny…

Rosechu took a deep breath. "Christine…sweetie…I didn't mean…I don't…I…"

"I wanna heawr 'bowt meeeeee!" Christine squealed happily, and slapped her armstubs together.

Al shook his head in disgust. And here he had thought _Cera_ was the self-centered one. He'd wondered if Kevin had exaggerated about the purple Rosey's behavior, but this…this _thing_ was Narcissus reincarnated into the body of a fuzzy, ugly baby chu. Christine didn't care that her own mother was at death's door or that she, her brother, and her sister were all mere minutes away from being tortured and murdered in three horrifying marathons of violence, pain, and death. All she wanted to hear was more about how absolutely pretty and special she was.

"Yes, tell her, Rosechu," he added, and knelt down beside her so Christine could stare into her mother's eyes and hear the horrid truth at last. "Tell her about her daddy...and we'll let you go. True and honest. I swear to GodJesus, we'll let you go."

Rosechu let out a horrible strangled sob that sounded like a cat dying, and told them everything.

_"Wosey!" cried the tiny pink Rosey, staring up at the big unfamiliar faces smiling down on her. "Goo-goo! Sey! Sey!"_

_A collective "awww" swept the room as the partygoers watched little Cerah squirming around and cooing adorably in her crib, swaddled in a mound of blankets. The Chaotic Combo, Christian Weston Chandler, and all of Sonichu and Rosechu's friends had been invited to celebrate the hatching of the happy couple's first child – a beautiful, healthy baby Rosey._

_"She looks just like her mother," Angelica Rosechu commented, and tickled Cerah's petite nose._

_"I think she's gonna be a great mommy one day," added Wild Sonichu._

_"Tha…it's a good thing dat…uh…a good thing dat tha widdle bay-bee is a Rosey," said Chris. "When you ha…when you an' Sonichu make some more of tha Sonees an' Roseys, Sarah…Cerah can take care of her brothers an' sisters, like a good Rosey! She's a pretty Rosey, uh, Rosechu."_

_Rosechu smiled and nodded and blushed at her creator's stuttered, jumbled praise, while Sonichu proudly placed a gloved hand on his heartsweet's shoulder. Even if Chris had called Cerah the ugliest little lump of fail in the world, his reaction would have been the same. "Yes Father, Rosechu and I will give you many more grandchildren to form the next Chaotic Combo."_

_"If tha, tha nex…if you, uh, make a bay-bee, uh, Sonee next, I would, I would appr-approve of you naming him after, uh, me."_

_"But Father," Rosechu spoke up. "We already agreed to name our next Rosey after you. What about someone else you care about?"_

_"Well, ah, Rosechu, the…I believe I am more than enough ta…uh…I deserve tha two bay-bee names an'…" Chris let out a short stress sigh as he realized that it would get very confusing if the couple's next child was named Christian Sonee. Telling the difference between his name and the baby's name would just be too hard, and it would give him too much stress. "Well, uh, you could use tha…you could name tha Sonee after my fa-, uh, after Robert Franklin Chandler, tha former Mayor…of CWCville." He made sure to announce his father's full name, title, and the city they were in, in case any of his beloved creations had forgotten. They hadn't._

_"Robert Sonee?" Sonichu grinned complacently. "What a great idea, Father!"_

_"I don't know," said Rosechu, and vapidly scratched her headspikes. "Robert doesn't sound spunky enough. How about just Rob, or Bobby, or…I know! How about Robbie Sonee?"_

_"I, I like dat name, Rosechu," blurted out Chris. He adjusted his glasses and smiled so hard that the effort scrunched up his pudgy face like raw bread dough. "So tha next bay-bee will be called Robbie Sonee or, uh, Christine Rosey. Well, I, um, tha Mayor's work is never…I need ta go help with tha hard Mayor work…" He grabbed a handful of cookies from one of the party trays and waddled out the door toward where SON-CHU was parked, leaving a trail of crumbs behind._

_Sonichu gave Rosechu a quick kiss on the cheek and a seductive stare. "Well Rosey, you know we'll have to do what Father says. I'd love to have a Sonee next! Just imagine, a spunky little champ who I could teach how to run fast and play catch and…"_

_Rosechu giggled and blushed. "Not now, honey-bolt! We have guests! And anyway, we've already got one precious little baby to take care of!"_

_"Goo-goo!" squeaked Cerah._

_Far in the back of Rosechu's mind, buried beneath endless strata of shopping-related memories, lay a bloody hospital bed, bright lights and a deep, intense, flaring pain in her abdomen. She'd strained and pushed and screamed and wept for hours and hours before expelling a bloody, slimy egg the size of a basketball from her china – an egg from which Cerah Rosey had hatched three weeks later. But those weren't good memories, so she had merely forgotten that they even happened. To her, the notion of having more children was nothing more than a joyful idea. Chris wanted it to happen, anyway, and she had no intention of disappointing her hubby-bolt, either._

_As the party carried on into the evening and guests began to drift away from the adorable Rosey in her crib, Rosechu began to feel more and more uncomfortable with Magi-Chan Sonichu. There was just something…off in the way he stood, calmly staring at her with that disconcerting half-smile on his face. And yet, she felt like some powerful magnetic force was drawing her closer to him. She would find excuses to go get more non-alcoholic CWC Orange Soda punch just so she could walk by and feel that nice sensation in the back of her head that she always felt when she was close to Magi-Chan. Talking to him was even better. He had this way of speaking that was laced with so much emotion, so many different feelings packed into each word…_

_When the last of the Combo had left and Sonichu had dashed off to see if Chris needed any help at the Shopping Center, Rosechu cleaned up the leftover food and garbage like a dutiful wife, washed and put away the dishes, then finally stopped by Cerah's room to check on her new baby. The little pink Rosey, just small enough to fit into Rosechu's hand in her newborn stage, was already fast asleep, making soft "goo-goo"s and giggling as she dreamed happy Rosey dreams of evolving and finding a nice Sonichu husband to love and take care of for the rest of her life._

_"Congratulations."_

_Rosechu whirled around, her heart pounding in surprise. Magi-Chan hovered before her, a purple specter in the dark room. She sighed in relief and turned back to tuck Cerah in._

_"I'm sorry, Magi-Chan," she addressed him with a little laugh. "I didn't know you were still…"_

_"I wanted to give you a gift," continued the psychic Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, and held out a hand. A tall, perspiring glass of cold liquid with ice cubes and a slice of lemon appeared before her eyes, floating on a shimmering field of energy. Rosechu reached out and took it from him._

_"What is this?" she asked with a smile. "You know that Father doesn't want us to drink alc-"_

_"It's a Long Island Iced Tea," Magi-Chan explained with infinite patience. "Go on. Father's not here now. He won't be mad at you for trying something new. You deserve it."_

_Obediently, Rosechu took a sip. As a Sonichu, Magi-Chan obviously knew what was best for her. She winced at the slight burn in the back of her throat, but took another sip anyway. It was a good drink…and it was making her feel like how she felt when Magi-Chan was close._

_He actually was close, now. Very close._

_"What's…going on?" she slurred._

_"Shut up," Magi-Chan said in that same placid, hypnotic voice. "Take your clothes off."_

_Rosechu nodded at the helpful recommendation, and did so._

_"You'll soon have a gift for me too," Magi-Chan stated calmly, and took her then and there._

_In that one brief moment of sudden clarity before she felt him enter her, Rosechu finally, at last, realized what was going on, and how easily she had fallen into Magi-Chan's trap._

_She did not resist…in fact, she rather enjoyed it._

Silence reigned in the basement of 14 Brunchville Lane, broken only by a clattering sound in the kitchen above them. Steve was yelling something to Kuri about canola oil, while Robbie kept on screaming and crying for his mother and father.

Finally, Christine spoke. It was a strange voice…a voice somewhere between confusion and a deep, helpless fear of the horrid truth that her mother had just revealed.

"But…but you an Daddee awways towd me dat ima shiny Wosey…an dat my fuw's puwpul 'cuz ima shiny Wosey…an dat ima speshul pwetty shiny Wo-"

"There's nothing 'speshul' about you, you fat purple maggot," sneered Nate as Al passed him the bat. He snatched one of the Rosey's triangular ears between his thumb and index finger and tweaked it sharply, pinching the soft flap of skin hard enough to draw blood. Christine let loose with a fresh squeal of pain, and tears began pouring from her eyes once again.

What was Mommy saying? She was supposed to be a shiny Rosey, and everyone had always said how beautiful and unique she was, and how lucky Sonichu and Rosechu were to have brought a shiny into the world. She liked Uncle Magi-Chan a lot, but he couldn't be her daddy. No. Sonichu, the _true_ and _original_ Sonichu was her daddy. The mean Jerkops were just tricking her mother into making up silly stories that didn't make any sense, since they didn't involve her.

"Dat was a dumb stowee," she said haughtily, her mother's confession completely forgotten. "It wasn't abowt me. I wanna stowee abowt meeeeee! You'we awl a buncha diwtee mean twolls dat made up dose swandewous wies abowt Unca Magi-Chan an Mommee, an Mommee just made up dat dumb stowee ta distwact you whiwe Daddee…"

Al rolled his eyes, leaned forward, tipped his mask up, and spat right in her smug little face. Christine cried out in disgust and tried to wriggle free of the duct tape, but only managed to get the saliva all over her purple fur. Meanwhile, Allie had located a sewing needle that had been carelessly left out on the floor, and was now heating the tip in the flame of Trogdor's pilot light. Nate glanced over and turned the bat away so Christine couldn't see what was about to happen.

"So…the rumors were true," chuckled the Legend as he stared down at Rosechu. "You made a little purple bastard baby with Magi-Chan Sonichu." Laughing, he turned to Christine. "Not so special now, are you, 'Shining Rosey'?"

"NOOOO!" shouted Christine, thrashing around against the tape in a futile attempt to escape. "Ima shiny Wosey! IMA PWETTY SHINY WOSEY AN MY DADDEE'S DA TWOO AN OWIGINAL SONICHUUUEEEEEEEEEIIIIIIEEEEEHHHH!" A fresh torrent of tears poured from her glassy blue eyes as Allie drove the red-hot needle right up through the bottom of her plastic shoe and into the supersensitive center of her left stumpfoot. "WAAAAAHHHHH! AAAAAAHHHHHHH! EEEEEIIIIIAAAAHHHHH! AAAAAAAAAIIEEEHHHHH!"

Allie simply grinned and twisted the needle. Steam gushed from the sizzling wound as Christine screeched and kicked wildly, trying to dislodge the hot pointy thing from her foot. Allie simply left it inside and stepped back to watch the purple Rosey squirm and bawl in helpless torment.

"Back to where we were," continued Al in a casual tone. "Well, that confession didn't get _quite_ the reaction I was hoping for. Don't worry, though. We got it _all_ on video. I have a feeling that a whole lot of chus are gonna enjoy hearing the _real _story of their little pretty princess idol."

"NO!" screamed Rosechu. "Please! Don't tell Sonichu or Father! Magi-Chan will be so angry! I'll do anything! I'll let you kill all the children! Just let me go and don't tell my hubby-bolt!"

"SHUT UP, YOU VAPID WHORE!" Al kicked her in the face, bruising her jaw and making her shriek like a banshee. "Nate. Bat. NOW!"

"WAIT!" The female chu spluttered and struggled helplessly. "YOU PROMISED! YOU SAID YOU'D LET ME GO!"

Al glared down at her and laughed cruelly. "And you believed me, you naive slut. Oh well. Shit happens."

Wasting no time, Nate handed the crying Rosey and her makeshift prison back over to the Legend. Al grabbed it, tested its weight, then swung it down with all his might, landing a blow directly on the right side of Rosechu's face.

_CRACK!_

"WAAAAAAHHHHH! MOMMEEEEEEE!" wailed Christine as she felt the bat strike home.

"AAAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHH! RRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHH!" Rosechu's lower jaw dropped open of its own volition, shattered free of her skull by Al's violent smash. Blood gushed from her mouth in a foaming red spray, pooling on the floor beneath her torn face. A nail had punctured the right half of her fused eye, and now all she was able to do through the pain was to stare up and attempt, unsuccessfully, to scream. All she could produce was a strangled "HGGGGHRHHHRRR!" noise, punctuated with gurgling moans and bubbles of spit. She was drowning in her own blood, and Christine, with her little eyes forced wide open by fear, had to watch the entire horrific show. Without her digits, Rosechu's hands were no more useful than her children's puny stubs. She couldn't push herself upright, or try and crawl away. She could only lie there, bleeding, broken, and useless, waiting for the last blow to fall.

_Please,_ Rosechu thought in a half-insane storm of agony. _Please, GodJesus, let them kill Christine and let me live. I can get my tubes untied and Sonichu and I can make more babies…_

Al raised his bat over his head, as if to strike a final blow that would end the lives of both chus…then passed it over to Nate once again. Looking down at the pathetic, shattered Rosechu through the cold, blood-spattered visor of his welder's mask, he stepped forward and raised a heavy boot above her face.

"Don't worry," said the Legend. "We'll send her along…_eventually_." He smiled. "Ladies first."

"NNNNHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHH!"

_CRUNCH! CRUNCH! CRUNCH!_

Al brought his foot down again and again, slowly flattening Rosechu's skull against the hard concrete floor as if it were some massive cockroach that refused to be crushed. Blood, brain mush, and chips of bone clung to his boot in a sickening, sticky stew, and even though Rosechu should have died from the first crushing stomp, some horrible flaw in her bizarre nervous system kept her alive and aware, feeling each heavy blow from above for nearly two minutes until Al's heel finally ground down on her brain stem and severed it, killing Sonichu's beloved heartsweet. Her head now resembled a pancake, soaked in blood and perforated with white skull fragments and slimy clumps of grey matter. The spasms in her body slowed, then gradually stopped at last.

And yet the Legend still kept on stomping and stomping, ignoring Christine's shrieks of terror as he crushed Rosechu's head bit by bit. By the time he finally slowed down and ceased his furious assault, there wasn't much more left besides a large splatter of gore and a flattened circle of crunchy skull shards beneath his foot. His right pant leg was stained red, all the way up to the knee. Calmly, he stepped back to survey his handiwork.

From the neck down, Rosechu's limp, naked body was relatively unharmed, apart from a scattering of bruises and her bloody hands where her fingers had been lopped off. In life, she had been the heart and soul of chu supremacy where her husband had been its champion and her children had been its symbols. She had been Sonichu's heartsweet, a dutiful wife and mother, a fierce fighter…an utter disgrace to the female gender, a feminist's nightmare, an uncaring and wicked monster. In death, she was just another chu, a fallen idol, a shattered hope for her species, a pathetic pile of broken flesh and bone…no less mortal than the Jerkops who had taken her life.

"Holy shit," breathed Nate. "Jesus Christ…"

"We…we did it," Allie whispered. "Sweet Arceus, it's over."

"Not yet," murmured Al, and looked up at the purple Rosey, who was now shrieking at the top of her lungs and pleading with her dead mother to wake up and save her. "Not yet."

"MOMMMMMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" wailed Christine as tears poured from her eyes and began soaking into her little spotted pink shirt. Unable to believe that the Honey Badgers had just murdered her mother, she continued staring down at Rosechu's maimed body, snuffling and weeping all the while. Why wasn't Mommy telling her that she was a pretty Rosey anymore? She wanted to know just how special and beautiful she was! She needed it! She _deserved_ it!

Al smiled cruelly and patted the little chu on her head, ruffling her soft purple spikes. "The Legend killed Mommy. And now we get to have some fun together, little Chrissy." He placed the bat and its occupant on the concrete floor and began unwinding the duct tape, slowly, so as not to pull any of the narcissistic Rosey's precious little "shiny" hairs out. Yet.

"My Daddee's gonna zap you awl to da extweem wen he gets back fwom zappin da dang diwty Jewkops," Christine stated arrogantly, and shot Al what he assumed was supposed to be her grandfather's trademark Creepy Stare. "Gwampa Chwis says dat da Jewkops awe awl stoopid an dey wanna destwoy Twoo Wuv an dey tink dat Viwginia is fow Viwgins, NOT Twoo Wuv Coupwes! An…an Gwampa Chwis said dat Jewkops awe supposed ta be distwacted by cute Woseys!" She let out an intense stress sigh. "Dis is too haaaaaaawd! I wasn't weady! You'we awl cheatews! You wet me go! I'm gonna tewl Daddee an Gwampa Chwis! Wet me go!"

"We. Just. Killed. Your. Mother," Al emphasized, stating each word as clearly and simply as he could in the hopes of somehow breaking through the walls of Christine's fortress of denial. He stopped unwrapping her and turned the bat so she could see the remains of Rosechu's body.

Christine stress-sighed. "Dat's not da twoo an owiginal Mommee! Gwampa Chwis says da Twoo Wuv Coupwes wike Mommee an Daddee awe heawtsweets as wong as biwds tweet. You'we just jeawous 'cuz you'we homow jewk twolls an Mommee wuvs me 'cuz ima pwetty shiny Wosey!"

It was no use. Pained and stressed though she was, the stubborn Rosey simply refused to accept the truth that lay before her. In her mind, she was still in control, because she was such a special little shiny Rosey and the world would always sort out everything bad in her life because that's what Grandpa Chris had told her and Cera and Robbie every time he visited Mommy and Daddy.

"I don't wike dis stickee stuwff," Christine complained, sighing loudly and glaring up at Al. "I want my miwwor an I want Daddee an Gwampa Chwis ta make Mommee's heady bettewr an zap you to da extweem an I want my miwwor. I want my miwwor! I WANT MY MIWWOR!"

"Well, you can't have your mi-"

"I WANT MY MIWWOR NOW! NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!"

"SHUT UP! YOU CAN'T HAVE YOUR FUCKING MIRROR!" Al reached out and grabbed a large hunk of duct tape that was stuck directly to Christine's incredibly soft, sensitive belly fur.

"You said a bad wowd," said Christine, and crossed her armstubs haughtily. "I'm gonna tewl Daddee you said a bad wowd an made Mommee's heady huwt. Gimme back my miwwor!" All she cared about was the fact that the big mean stupid Jerkop wasn't giving her the mirror that she deserved after going through so much stress and having her Heart Level shattered so many times. Her cuteness hadn't gotten their awe like it was supposed to because they had cheated. They weren't treating her like the special shiny Rosey she was, because they were all stupid!

"One more time," growled Al. "Say one more thing about your mirror."

Christine smiled smugly. She'd won, and the Jerkop had given up, because she was in control, and stupid bad Jerkops couldn't possibly win against shiny Roseys and their cuteness!

"Hee hee!" she giggled. "My miww-"

_RRRRRRRRRIIIIIIPPPPPPPPPPPP!_

"EEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIAAAAAAAAEEEEEAAAAAGGG GHHHHHHHH!" screeched Christine, her blue eyes bulging in unspeakable torment as Al tore the massive strip of duct tape right off of her fat little body, taking with it a good percentage of the exposed fur on her belly and sides, right under where her shirt had been pulled up in the chaos of Rosechu's beating. For the Rosey, it was the equivalent of having a man's chest, back, pubic, and facial hair yanked out by the roots all at once…only worse. Much, much worse.

"WAAAAAAAHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

Tossing the hair-filled tape cocoon into the garbage where it belonged, Al snatched up Christine in one hand and dumped the struggling baby chu right in front of Allie as if she were a piece of trash, then sat down behind her and watched her squirm around on the floor. The Rosey shrieked and cried, bawling at the top of her lungs and squeezing her eyes shut while her skin blazed with pain. Massive clumps of her beautiful fur were now gone, ripped out a la Steve Carell in _The 40-Year-Old Virgin_. To her, the only thing worse than the horrible stinging sensation was knowing that Al had taken away her special shiny fur that made her so unique and beautiful.

"Right. That was fun." The Legend held out the crying larva to Allie. "Process her."

"Hold still, wittle bay-bee," crooned the Jerkop as she cuddled the Rosey in her arms. Christine's wails stopped momentarily, her infantile mind registering the presence of care and pity, an end to her pain and stress. Desperately seeking attention, she hugged the potential love giver's arm with her stubs and sniffled pathetically. Only when Allie's nails tightened around her headspikes did she realize how utterly, ludicrously wrong she had been to even _consider_ trusting her tormenters.

_Rrrrrip!_

"WUH-WUH-WAAAAAAHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" Christine screamed as she felt the little pink bow forcefully tearing out her uppermost quills. The root was firmly embedded in her head, and thus gave way to an incredibly agonizing wound when Allie pressed her against the floor and pulled it free. A trickle of blood shot down her face, but quickly slowed and stopped as her inherent healing factor took over. The pain was still there, though. No amount of her parents' DNA, no matter how great, could ever dull the suffering of Christine Rosey.

Allie removed the soft purple headspike from the bow, noting the drops of blood that smeared the root. With a satisfied smile, she dropped the bow into a Ziploc bag, sealed it, and handed it to Nate. Rolling the purple Rosey over onto her stomach, she plucked off both of her little shoes, bagged them, and withdrew the needle as well. Christine squealed in shock as blood squirted from the deep puncture. Smiling, Allie wiped the needle on the Rosey's torn fur and pocketed it.

"WAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! MOMMEE AN DADDEE BOUGHT DOSE FOW MEEEEE!" bawled Christine, and began kicking and pounding the cold floor with her stubby limbs in helpless tard rage and stress. Tears pooled on the concrete beneath her hideous lizard eyes, and Allie couldn't tell whether it was because of the horrific discomfort in her belly and foot, or if the baby chu was simply having the worst tantrum of her spoiled life just because her precious little clothes were being taken away. Either way, the Rosey's screams pleased her immensely.

Rinse and repeat for shirt and skirt. Just for fun, Allie dropped the skirt by itself to see if its parachute function would activate, but the striped cloth simply dropped and crumpled, obeying the laws of physics. Only when it was wrapped around such a horrid and disgusting violation of everything good and natural in the world did its parachute properties actually manifest.

"WAAAAHHH! GIMME DOSE! GIMME BACK MY CWOTHES NOW NOW NOW NOW!" Fueled by a surge of blinding anger, the now-naked Christine pushed herself off the floor and waddled right up to Allie, then began hopping up and down in a pathetic attempt to reach the tiny articles of clothing that the Jerkop was currently bagging. Allie rolled her eyes and shoved the tard-raging Rosey away forcefully, sending her tumbling backwards head over stumpfeet.

Al, in the meantime, had retrieved a new object from the "shiny kit" – the electric shaver. While the little purple blob struggled to right herself, he knelt down and picked her up with one hand. Christine began kicking his arm defiantly, but unlike her brother Robbie, her feet were pitifully small, and without her shoes, they couldn't do much more than simply flail around like the little fleshy stumps they were. Biting her captor was no more effective, given her total lack of teeth.

"Christine," Al addressed her quietly, flipping her around in his hand so she could see him.

"WAAAAAAHHHHH! WET ME GO YOU STOOPID MEANIE HOMOW TWOLL JEWK!"

"_Christine_," repeated the Jerkop squad commander, to no avail. Squeezing her eyes shut, the purple Rosey shrieked in rage and pounded her weak little armstubs against his fingers, hoping that if she made as much of a fuss as possible, a big brave Sonichu would come and rescue her like Grandpa Chris said they were supposed to. She was a helpless damsel in distress, just like her mother, and she needed a big brave strong hero to save her from these heart-shattering jerks.

"WET ME GOOOOO!" she wailed. "WET ME GO WET ME GO WET ME GO WET ME-"

Al sighed in frustration. "Christine…you're an ugly Rosey."

Christine perked up immediately, her eyes widening in sudden disbelief. "Wat?"

"You," continued the Legend, smiling sadistically, "are the most disgusting, despicable, loathsome, self-absorbed, pathetic, hideous little beast I've ever had the pleasure of killing." Finally, a breakthrough. He should have realized it much earlier. "You're nothing special. You're not a shiny Rosey. You're an abomination, born of incest. You don't deserve _any_ praise. You're ugly, fat, stupid, selfish, spoiled, weak, insufferable, and completely worthless."

There was no answer from Christine. Her eyes were bulging, her plump little body was shaking with uncontrollable hatred and shock, and her disgusting harelip mouth was hanging open so wide that Al could almost see right back into her esophagus. Behind her, Allie had sawed off a piece of flesh from a certain part of Rosechu's corpse and was roasting it over Trogdor's pilot light. She mouthed _hold on a sec_ to Al, and winked knowingly.

Al winked back. "So now that I have your attention, 'Shining Rosey', let me tell you exactly what I'm going to do here. First, I'm going to-"

"I AM NOT UGWY OW FAT OW STOOPID!" shrieked Christine, and thrashed around so hard that Al actually almost lost his grip. He couldn't believe it…she'd actually demonstrated some legitimate _effort_ for once in her life. A pity the same couldn't apply to her Chandler-nurtured, Sonichu and Rosechu-enforced, narcissistic mindset. But no. All three of the Sonichu brats were far, _far_ beyond any form of redemption. There was no way the Honey Badgers would let any of them die with their spirits unbroken. Not after all they'd done to seize this one magnificent chance. Not after Jake and Amanda and Matt and Zoey and all of their dead friends and allies.

"YOU'WE WYING! I AM NOT UGWY 'CUZ IMA SPESHUL WOSEY AN YOU'WE JUST JEAWOUS 'CUZ MY CUTENESS GETS YOUWR AWE AN IM DA ONWY SHINY WOSEY IN DA WOWLD AN DAT MAKES ME SPESHUL AN PWETTY! WAAAHHH!" Christine continued screaming and crying, her eyes burning with frenzied fury as she raged and struggled and fired off misguided Sparks in every direction until her remaining fur was all standing straight up due to static. Al merely watched her spasm, smiling all the time. Reaching out, he accepted the cooked piece of Rosechu from Allie, waited until Christine opened her mouth to scream at him again, and stuffed the hunk of flesh right down her throat.

Unbelievably, the purple Rosey immediately ceased her tantrum and began chewing the meat with a happy cry of "YAY!" _This_ was how it was supposed to be. Those mean jerks were finally realizing that she was just a helpless little baby and she needed food to get rid of all the Prickly-Wicklies and stress. Due to her lack of teeth, she could only gum the cooked flesh, but it was more than obvious just how much she was enjoying the treat.

"Dat was tastee!" she squealed, and glared up at Al expectantly as she swallowed, her face set in a smug smirk. "I want mowe foowd! Gimme mowe foowd NOW NOW NOW NOW NOW!"

Al shrugged. "If you say so, wittle Wosey. White meat or dark meat?" He turned her around so she could see Allie carving another piece of bloody meat off of Rosechu's torso with her SOG knife, then piercing it like a shish kebab and roasting it over Trogdor's pilot light. The sugary meat caramelized almost instantly, hissing and sizzling with delicious juices and scents.

This, quite predictably, resulted in the moment of truth to end all moments of truth.

"Wuh…wuh…WUH...WUH…" stammered Christine, building toward the first and most terrible explosion of fear, betrayal, suffering, and pain she had ever felt in her almost three years of life. "WUUHH…WUUHHH…WUUUHHHH…WWWWWWWWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! WWWWWAAAAAAHHHAAAAHHAAAAAAAAAAA! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

Al breathed out slowly, his eyes squeezed shut as he sat there in silence and listened to his tiny captive crack under the stress. Christine was screaming and screaming now, unable to stop, her mouth hanging open, her eyes bulging, and her stubby limbs flailing chaotically. To the Legend, every scream from the Rosey's mouth was a choir of angels singing in harmonious joy, every tear a drop of liquid diamond. It was beautiful, magnificent, a masterpiece of suffering. Christine Rosey's death, and everything leading up to it, would be his magnum opus.

"By the way," Allie added with a happy smile as she chucked the second piece of roast Rosechu steak across the room and down the screaming Rosey's throat. Perfect shot. "You ate Mommy!"

"WUUUUUUGH! WUUUGH! GUGHGUGHGUGHGUGHGUGH!" Christine choked, and tried to spit out the stringy flesh, but her freakish fused digestive tract wouldn't allow her to reject anything remotely edible. And unfortunately for her, Rosechu's flesh was _extremely_ edible. It smelled and tasted delicious, too, and she was still satisfied with having devoured the snack, even though some small part of her undeveloped brain kept screaming at her that she'd just eaten part of her own mother. Truly, Christine and her kin were beyond any form of empathy known to sentient creatures. But the Jerkops had expected as much from the hideous spawn of Sonichu and Rosechu…or Rosechu and Magi-Chan, in Christine's case.

Al clicked on the electric shaver, savoring the harsh buzzing sound as he pressed the business end to the Rosey's fuzzy belly and pushed, shearing off the delicate peach fuzz to reveal the pale pink skin beneath. The duct tape had done a fair amount of work already, and it wasn't long before a small pile of purple fur lay on the floor beneath her. Allie gathered it all up in another plastic Ziploc bag, to save for a later occasion. When Christine finally realized what the Jerkops were doing, she screamed louder than ever and tried to zap the razor with a Spark, but only succeeded in giving it an extra boost while Al finished shaving her face.

"Hmm," mused the Legend as he brushed the rest of the fur off his victim and studied the bare Rosey, making note of her undeveloped headspikes, her exposed cheekspots, and the pair of soft quills on her back. "That's a lot better, don't you think, shiny Rosey?"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" bawled Christine. It was amazing that she hadn't blown out her vocal cords yet. Another brilliant adaptation of the larval Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

"Here, I gave you a makeover." Al stood up and carried her over to the massive mirror propped up against the wall. He smiled as he held her out, forcing her to look upon her bare, pudgy body. "See? I was right. You're ugly, Christine. You're the ugliest Rosey in the world._Disgusting_."

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHH! WAAAAAAHHHHH! NNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Al turned her around and tickled her little nose, chuckling to himself all the while. Christine tried to bite him, but without any teeth, this attempt at self-preservation didn't go well at all. Enraged, she summoned yet another Spark and zapped the Jerkop's hand, making his skin prickle slightly.

"Always with the Sparks," muttered Al. "But it's not gonna save you, Christine. Not at-"

"YOU'WE WYING! IMA PWETTY WOSEY! WAAAAAAHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAHHH!"

Al shook his head in utter astonishment. He couldn't believe it. He'd been certain…so certain that Christine had broken when she realized she'd been eating her dead mother's flesh. She knew…she _knew_ Rosechu was dead. But she simply didn't care anymore. Already, the stubborn self-assuredness had returned, which meant only one thing. He'd have to start all over again.

"No," growled the Legend, and turned the shaved Rosey around to face the mirror. "NO."

"YES!" howled Christine. "IMA PWETTY WOSEY! IMA PWETTY WOSEY! IMA-"

"It's quiet time now," Al continued, trying his very hardest to keep his voice calm and suppress the rage that was building within. He took a step forward, bringing Christine closer to the object she loved more than anything in the world. "If you don't quiet down, I'll have to punish you."

"IMA PWETTY WOSEY! IMA PWETTY WOSEY! IMA PWETTY WOSEY! IMA PWETT-"

Al took another step. "No, you're an ugly Rosey."

"IMA PWETTY WOSEY! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH! IMA PWETTY WOSEY!"

It was the final straw. Al's eardrums were about to break, as was his mind. Turning to Allie and Nate, he reached up, pushed his mask back, and spoke only a single, hate-drenched word.

"Leave."

Allie opened her mouth to reply, but Nate placed a hand on her shoulder and led her towards the stairway. Christine was Al's to dispatch, but they could always watch Robbie or Cera's torment. When the two Jerkops had gone, Al flipped his welder's mask over his face and glared down at the bawling, shaved Rosey clutched in his hand.

"PUT ME DOWN NOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!" shrieked Christine, pounding her tiny armstubs against Al's hand and squirming around like a plump fuzzy maggot.

"Sure thing," snarled the Legend, and drove his gloved fist straight into the mirror. The glass shattered instantly, a spiderweb of cracks that raced out to the frame in less than a second. Before Christine could draw breath for another scream, Al grabbed up his straight razor from the toolbox and, pinning the struggling Rosey to the floor with one hand, brought the viciously sharp blade down towards her fuzzy, bloody face with the other. She bawled shrilly and squeezed her eyes shut, but the defensive reaction was exactly what her aggressor had been waiting for.

_Shick! Shick!_

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Christine's piercing cries of terror and pain went all but unnoticed by Al as he sliced off each of her eyelids with surgical precision, exposing the slimy indigo orbs housed within. Blood poured like tears from a ragged ring around each socket, mixing with the real tears of the agonized, screaming Rosey. Laughing to himself, the Legend flicked away the two severed, eyelash-studded scraps of flesh and lunged with his other hand - the one holding her - smashing her head into the center of the cracked glass.

_CRUNCH!_

"NOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHAAAAAAAAHHHGGHUGHUGHUUUG GH!" Christine raised her armstubs and tried to shield her beloved face, but to no avail. The jagged shards pierced her eyes like daggers, carrying on back through her corneas and embedding themselves in her soulless, reptilian eyeballs. Her cheekspots sparked and sizzled violently as the bioelectric organs ruptured, but unfortunately for her, there was no longer enough voltage within to fry her to death. She'd used up all her energy by firing off futile Sparks at her tormentors.

And Al still wasn't done with her. Not even close. : )

"Awww, did I hurt your pwecious wittle face?" he crooned with savage glee, and dumped the bleeding, crying, and blind Christine onto the cold floor. "Don't worry, I've got just the thing!"

Reaching for his "shiny kit", Al dragged it over and popped it open to reveal the goodies inside. As the Rosey struggled to crawl away, he placed one hand on her back, pinning her to the floor.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" she wailed, pawing at her shredded face in inconceivable despair. The prospect of her being a pretty Rosey had now been severely reduced.

Al didn't respond. Grabbing two circular shards of bloody, jagged glass, he flipped Christine over onto her back. There wasn't much left of her eyes anymore…her constant struggling had reduced them to two socketfuls of bloody mush mixed together with mirror shards. The cruel irony of her plight might have been enough for a lesser man than Albert Ledger, but he still wasn't satisfied. Christine needed to know pain unlike any known form of pain…and so far, he was doing an excellent job of bringing her there. All three of the Sonichu children were going to be pushed far beyond any kind of suffering the Honey Badgers had enacted on any Sonee or Rosey before, given that their DNA – being that of the original Sonichu and Rosechu – contained a healing factor…and no pain limit. _That_ was the key here…surpassing that limit and showing the little brats just how far the Jerkops could push them before their chubby bodies gave out.

Pushing two fingers into the ragged mess that had once been Christine's eyeballs, Al scooped the slimy, bloody chunks of meat and optic nerve right out of their sockets, relishing the Rosey's wails of agony as she felt the rough fingers scraping around inside her head and removing her two shredded blue eyes. The last things that had made her look so special and unique and pretty were gone…ripped away in the blink of an eye. Christine screamed again and again, writhing around in her own blood and misery while Al deposited the gooey glass-encrusted mess into an empty Ziploc bag and popped open a second one. Inside lay a mixture of rock salt and table salt.

"Hold still!" instructed Al, and upended the bag over the Rosey's mutilated face.

"EEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! EEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" screeched Christine, louder than ever before, as the salt poured into her bleeding eye sockets and infiltrated the deep cuts in her skin. At this point, a normal homebred or a feral Rosey would have either blacked out from the pain or died instantly of a brain hemorrhage caused by immense physical trauma, but then again, Christine was no normal homebred, and certainly no feral.

Desperately trying to get the burning white crystals out of her head, Christine began rubbing her eye sockets furiously, crying and shrieking as her fingerless stubs only managed to work the salt even further and deeper back into the horrific wounds. Al flicked the Zippo lighter a few times until he managed to start it, then pushed the Rosey's armstubs away from her face and jammed both of the mirror shards into the raw flesh around the edge of the sockets. Snatching her up in one hand, he positioned her contorted, blood-drenched face right next to the flickering flame.

"Having fun?" he chuckled.

"WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH !" wailed Christine, struggling to reach the two cold, sharp objects Al had embedded in her face.

The Jerkop inched the Zippo closer to her bare skin. "Stop crying. This'll make it _all_ better."

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

"Eat it, fucker," Al said, lowering Christine's head into the fire.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" she screamed, wiggling like crazy and trying to avoid the excruciating heat as the fatty flesh around her eyes bubbled and seared and began to fuse the shards of mirror with her face. Al held down her armstubs to keep her still while he worked, turning the lighter around and around to seal in the mirror circles. When he was finally satisfied, he released his grip on the Zippo and let it clatter to the floor, while Christine began making a series of strange choking sounds and batting at her own eyes, as if she somehow believed it would help remove the glass shards or reduce the pain in any way. The mirrors were well and truly a part of her now…yet she couldn't see a thing.

Al placed her on the floor and sat down cross-legged, closing his eyes as if in a meditative trance. Christine rolled around on the concrete pathetically, flailing and crying and screaming for her dead mother and her absent father and her lethargic, sluggish manchild of a grandfather. In the chaos of her own mind, Robbie and Cera didn't exist anymore. They couldn't help her. They couldn't save her. But now she was free! The big mean person had let her go, and now she could go tell Heather to call Daddy and Grandpa Chris! Grandpa Chris could make everything go back to the way it was! He'd make her a pretty Rosey again! He'd make her pretty again…

_Thump!_ Christine howled in shock and agony as she crawled right into the side of the basement, smacking her malformed head against the wall and sending a fresh wave of agony racing through her little body. Mewling and blubbering, she tried to push herself up and waddle away, but the heavy rock salt inside her head threw her even more off-balance than she already was. After crawling around for a while, trying and failing to find the stairs a grand total of eight times in the course of four minutes, the tiny Rosey finally gave up and collapsed in a quivering heap of fat.

Al opened his eyes and smiled. Christine wasn't even screaming anymore – she had expended the majority of her energy in her futile escape attempts. Faint moans and shuddering gasps were all she could muster now as she lay panting and gasping on the cold concrete floor – broken, blind, shaved bare, and in constant agony. Her innate healing ability was running at full power, knitting together some of the smaller wounds on her face and body…which, unfortunately for her, had the unwanted side effect of sealing the pieces of rock salt inside, where they burned against the Rosey's raw flesh like tiny lumps of molten magma. Combined with the wounds in her face and the fire-fused mirror shards that had now trapped the piles of stinging salt inside her empty eye sockets, the sheer intensity of Christine's suffering was simply unmatched.

"How do you feel now, wittle Wosey?" Al asked with mock sympathy.

"Wuhhh…wuhhh…WUHHH…WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH HHHH!" Christine managed to unleash another shriek of terror as the Jerkop's frighteningly calm voice rang in her little ears. "WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!"

Al walked over, bent down, and snatched up the tiny struggling Rosey in a single hand. Christine screamed as she felt his fingers close around her and lift her up off the floor. Something cold and metallic – a pair of tweezers – pushed their way in through her harelip mouth, forcing it open as she desperately tried to spit them out. She began coughing and panicking, nearly vomiting up her lunch as the steel pincers slowly made their way to the back of her throat and clamped shut around the base of her slimy, wriggling tongue like a vice.

"WWWWUUUUUGHGHGHGGGGHH!" she choked, struggling against the Legend's grip.

"Oh, be quiet," said Al happily as he pulled the tweezers back, hard. : )

_RRRRIP!_

"WUGHGH! GUGHGHGHGHGHH!" Christine screamed and gurgled as her severed tongue emerged from between her harelips, its rear end a motley mess of tattered red flesh. Al dropped the repulsive thing onto the floor, where it twitched one last time and lay limp like a little slug, its meager blood supply pooling beneath the point where he'd wrenched it out of her mouth. The horrified Rosey began spasming and shaking, clutching at her mouth, spitting out blood, and making all sorts of strangled choking noises. If Al didn't do something, she was going to drown.

Fortunately for him, he just happened to have packed that exact "something" in the "shiny kit". Unfortunately for Christine, it wasn't anything_close _to medicine. Popping open the bottle of lemon juice, Al poured a tablespoon of the sour liquid into the plastic cap and tipped it into the Rosey's open, bleeding mouth before she knew what was happening. He could have sworn he heard it sizzle as it touched the wound. Then came the most piercing, anguished screams of all.

"WWWWUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHH! WWWUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHH! HRRRRGGGGHHHHHEEEEEEEEEIIIIIEEEEIIIIIIIIIEEEEEIIII IIIEEEEEEEEEEEHHH!"

"Wow, Christine, that's great!" commented the Legend. "Now your voice actually makes sense!"

Christine tried to cry out again, but ended up vomiting a gooey spew of blood, half-digested food, and mucus onto her captor's hands. "HUUURRGGGHHHH! HUUUURRGGGHHH!"

"Disgusting." Al wiped the reddish brown mess on Christine's pudgy belly and reached for the Zippo lighter again. "What's Daddy gonna say when he comes home and finds his little princess all dirty?" He flipped it open and held it under one of the Rosey's frantically kicking stumpfeet. "I wonder if Kuri ever tried roasting them like this. Oh well. Nothing ventured…"

"WUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH!" wailed Christine, unable to form her species' signature "WAAAAAHHHHH!" without a tongue. The flame licked hungrily at her bare foot, turning the flesh crispy and black. Her body's own adipose tissue was melting, sizzling, frying her alive like a juicy slice of bacon in a pan. "WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"…nothing gained," sighed Al as he lifted his mask and sank his teeth into the caramelized meat of Christine's right stumpfoot. It was like biting into a big Fruit Gusher made of bacon – crispy, decadent, squirming, and just a little bit sweet from all the sugar in her blood. And best of all, the pitiful excuse for a leg was already cauterized, so she wouldn't bleed out while he ate her alive.

"WUUUUUUUHHHHHHHH!" Christine kicked out with her other foot and managed to land a pitiful little bump on the side of Al's cheek. For a moment, she dared to hope that good would prevail, that her act of defiance was enough to quell the stupid jerk and make him stop giving her the Prickly-Wicklies. Then the heat was back, burning against her left stumpfoot like hot coals and making her skin char up and the fat reserves in her leg bubble and melt into a greasy slick.

Bit by bit, Al nibbled away at both of the cooked limbs and even sucked the sugary marrow out of her bones, pausing only to break out the lighter and cauterize any veins he might have broken while dining on the half-cooked Rosey. The bones themselves was edible too, like sticks of rock candy. When he'd finished, he placed the baby chu on the floor and watched her try to crawl away using her armstubs. It wasn't really crawling so much as it was flailing, but Al didn't mind. Her shrill squeals and wails were more than enough to quench his thirst for misery and suffering.

Enthralled as he was with watching the legless Rosey wriggle around on the floor, Al had to keep reminding himself that his executioner squad was working on borrowed time. As Christine blubbered and managed to drag her mutilated body another half-inch away from him, the Jerkop leaned down and held the flame against the tip of her doughy arm. The baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon let out an earsplitting screech and tried to roll herself away from the searing heat, but Al held her down with his other hand and kept his thumb on the Zippo lighter's trigger until both armstubs were sufficiently cooked to a delicious crispy brown. Once again, the horrible nibbling, crunching, and cauterizing commenced, until Christine no longer had any limbs to move at all. She just lay there in a growing pool of blood and pus, rolling back and forth helplessly and shrieking "WWWUUUUUUUUHHHHHH!" over and over again – her mantra of suffering.

Al chewed and swallowed the last mouthful of cooked Rosey, licking the grease from his fingers as he watched the baby chu writhe and wriggle across the concrete like a hideously obese worm. He made a mental note to let Kuri know about his new cooking method…_after_ she and Steve had finished dispatching Robbie, of course. Come to think of it, what had the two Jerkops even been _doing_ to Sonichu's spunky little son to pass the time? Christine must have been at death's door by now, but even something as sweet as that could wait. Her regenerative powers would keep her alive long enough for Al to finish what he'd started. It was time to check on the others.

Grasping Christine by her stubby tail, the Legend plucked her up off the floor and let her dangle in midair while she sobbed and wailed as her body was wracked by never-ending spasms of burning pain. Al knew she had long ago passed the standard endurance limit for regular Sonees and Roseys – most likely from the rock salt in her eyes and the lemon juice in her mouth. If she hadn't had Rosechu and Magi-Chan's DNA, her tiny brain would have hemorrhaged itself into oblivion after enduring such nightmarish levels of torture and dismemberment. Just for good measure, he stuffed her into the big Ziploc bag full of salt, closed it up, poured the rest of the bottle's contents inside, and began shaking the entire agonizing concoction up and down until Christine's bleeding, mutilated body had been drenched in a stinging wash of salted lemon juice.

"WWWWWWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH!" she screamed, gasping for air and crying out in misery as the stinging liquid splashed into every cut and injury on her body. "WWWWWWWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Al made his way out of the workroom and up the stairs, taking note of the odd giggling sounds coming from Cera's room down the hallway. What on earth were Kevin and Jexis doing to her? At the top of the stairs, the Jerkop pushed open the door and was promptly greeted by an immensely satisfying sight. Steve and Kuri had pinned Robbie against the counter and were now force-feeding him copious amounts of Break You Dead hot sauce by using the Sonee's plastic baby bottle as an injector, squirting it alternately into his mouth and his butthole while he struggled and writhed in pain and fear. As the Sonee's muffled-but-high-pitched squeals of agony filled the kitchen, Al gave the Jerkops an encouraging nod and left them to their foul task.

"WUBBEEEHHHHH!" Upon hearing her brother's cries of pain, Christine began wriggling around inside the plastic bag, desperately calling for help as best she could with no tongue and a mouth full of salt, lemon juice, and her own blood. "WUBBEEH! HUWP MWEEEEEEHHHH!"

Robbie just lay there and screamed shrilly. The sauce had temporarily blinded him, and he was shrieking so loudly that his sister's anguish might as well have been nothing at all. Even if he'd been able to hear her cries, he wouldn't have cared about Christine one bit, due to his own stress. Rolling his eyes, Al gave the bag another shake to refresh the Rosey's suffering. If all went according to his gruesome plan, she only had a few more minutes left to live. It was up to him to make sure those few minutes lasted as long as possible in the horrid little baby chu's mind.

The garage was dark and silent when he opened the door and stepped inside. Flicking the light switch on, Al chuckled as he gazed at the two ridiculous go-karts for Sonichu and Rosechu that were parked behind the big family sedan. His laughter quickly stopped as soon as he noticed three tiny go-karts, one pink, one purple, and one yellow, on the floor beside the larger vehicles.

"How on earth would you three furfags even be able to steer?" he muttered to the bawling Rosey, and tossed the Ziploc bag on top of the washing machine, where it sloshed around and refilled her wounds with the stinging liquid. "You don't even have fingers. I bet you stunted little grubs would've just gone and killed yourselves with Mommy and Daddy's special Christmas presents. Which reminds me…did Grandpa Chris get you anything?" He grinned as Christine realized that she _hadn't_ received anything from Chandler for Christmas. The revelation that her own grandpa didn't think she was special was enough to prompt a bout of screaming on the level of the ones she had made when Al first introduced her to her new best friends - rock salt and lemon juice.

"Of course he didn't. It was the stress, you know." Al nodded sympathetically, then raised a foot over the purple kart and stomped down, hard. The machine shattered into pieces, reduced to a useless pile of plastic and metal while Christine wailed in despair at hearing the sound of her beloved toy's destruction. Whistling "Highway to Hell" to himself, the Legend pried open the washing machine's control panel and began tinkering around with the heating system. It was simple, really. Just turn off the cold water valve and increase the hot water supply to maximum power. In no time, he'd have a nice hot bath for Christine to splash around and play in.

"Wuuuuuhhhhh…wuuuuuuuhhhhhhh…WUH!"

Al looked up just in time to see the tiny limbless Rosey trying to squirm her way over the edge of the washing machine. Without a parent or her nanny around to save her, she might have plunged all the way down to the hard concrete floor and shattered her fragile skull…if the Jerkop hadn't simply pushed her into the middle and flipped her onto her back. Al simply couldn't believe how utterly careless Sonichu and Rosechu had been with their own beloved babies. Their house was an absolute mess, full of deadly objects that the larvae could have easily killed themselves with. The only reason any of the three children hadn't done that already was because of Heather Iglesias. Maybe if the PVCC had simply instructed her to abandon them and let them die from their own stupidity and curiosity, the Honey Badgers wouldn't have been needed at all.

But no. That would have been far too easy. Operation Hedgeclipper wasn't just about killing three homebreds and their mother. It was about sending a message to every Electric Hedgehog Pokémon in CWCville who saw Robbie, Christine, and Cera as the poster children for the progression of their species and looked to Rosechu as their queen. It was about destroying what little hope they had left to cling to in the face of the uprising. Even now, across the city, hundreds of PVCC operatives and thousands of human citizens waited in anticipation of the firestorm to come. At last, at long last, the key to igniting the city in all-out war was in their grasp.

And the final battle would begin with the deaths of Rosechu and the Sonichu spawn.

Al stood up and wiped his wet hands on his trench coat as the washing machine started rumbling. Scalding water gushed in from the rerouted valves and rose quickly, until it was nearly spilling over the edge of the central drum. Clouds of steam filled the air, and Christine began making breathless little squeals as the heat from within the washing machine began to reach her tortured little body. Al let her roll around for a few more seconds before finally rescuing her from the makeshift frying pan and turning off the water. Before she could feel any semblance of relief, he gave the bag a few more shakes and was rewarded with another barrage of agonized screams.

It was time to make an end of Christine once and for all. Part of Al wanted to put her inside a canteen or a similar container and clip her to his belt during the final battle, so her suffering could last even longer than it already had. If his squad hadn't been on a time budget, he might have actually considered that. But the cameras were rolling too, and everyone in CWCville – both humans and chus - needed to see the Sonichu children die. He owed them that much.

Al placed the bag and its plump, wailing occupant inside, making sure that Christine would feel the direct heat of the steaming hot water on her belly. It wouldn't _completely _boil her to death…if she kept moving, that is…but it would hurt like hell, which suited him just fine. As expected, the Rosey began rolling back and forth in an attempt to escape the heat, shrieking and bawling as she continued immersing herself in the stinging bath of rock salt and lemon juice. Every move she made only added to her torment, and she had to keep moving, or otherwise the heat would start to boil her flesh. It was a brilliant invention, really. Better still, Kevin had placed a camera inside the washer itself to broadcast every moment of her horrific death across the city.

A perpetual pain machine – the perfect fate for little Christine. : )

Al had come up with the idea in a drunken dream, and somehow, this was even better than his imagined version. The Rosey could end it at any time she wanted – if she would only lie still, the heat around her would cook her body alive. Somehow, the idea that giving up and dying might be easier hadn't yet crossed her vacuous little mind. In the middle of that perfect storm of agony, she still harbored some tiny hope that her _real _father Sonichu would be back to save her, that somehow Grandpa Chris could retcon it all away and give her back everything that the Jerkops had taken away. And this one grain of hope was enough to keep her fighting, thrashing and wriggling and increasing her own levels of pain more and more and more, until the amount she was bearing would have made even a Cenobite cringe. With no limit to her suffering, she edged toward madness, screaming and screaming until her voice finally broke and gave out.

"WWWWUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHH! WUUUUUHHH! WUUUUUUHHHHHHH! WUH…HUH…HUHHHH…HHHHHHHHGHGHGHGHGHHHH…HHHHHHHHHHHHH !"

Soon nothing but rasping sobs could be heard over the bubbling, steaming, and hissing sounds from within the washing machine. As Christine continued to cry and unsuccessfully attempt to scream, Al knelt down in front of her and patted her gently on the head with a gloved hand.

"There, there," he whispered mockingly, stroking the weeping baby chu's tiny, shaved ears through the plastic bag. "What a disgusting little creature you are. What a hideous, despicable maggot. I wish you could see how _pretty_ and _unique_ and _special_ you are now, shiny Rosey."

"Hghhhhhhhhhhhh…" wheezed Christine as she tried to wiggle away. "Hghhhhhhhhhhhhhhh…"

"That's right," continued Al, and leaned in close to her head. "Now I'm gonna tell you a little secret about me, Christine. Do you like secrets?" He laughed softly while the dying baby chu thrashed beneath his grip and squealed hoarsely. "Your, uh, 'parents'…did Mommy and Daddy ever tell you scary stories about the Big Mean Person? The troll who kills little babies like you?"

Christine froze. Somewhere within the fiery layers of agony wracking her brain, memories of her mother and father materialized, as if from smoke. With their horribly-designed nervous systems, Roseys usually forgot all but their happiest or most important memories within a matter of days, at best. But even the normally-forgotten ones could be triggered by something traumatic enough. In Christine's case, that quota had been surpassed about fifteen minutes ago.

It wasn't a happy memory, to be sure…one of the few truly stressful times in Christine's spoiled, pampered life. No wonder she'd forgotten it so quickly. One night, Sonichu and Rosechu had attended a meeting with Chris and the Chaotic Combo at the CWCville Shopping Center, leaving Heather alone to take care of the kids and put them to sleep. After enduring nearly seven hours of _Family Guy_, listening to the insufferable brats try to sing along to the opening theme, and cleaning up after Robbie whenever he waddled off to relieve himself in some random part of the house, the poor nanny had nearly reached her breaking point. Having gorged themselves on five boxes of Oreos and a gallon of chocolate milk for a "bedtime snack", the little chus quickly grew hyperactive and demanded, by whining at the top of their lungs, that Heather tell them a story.

And so she had. When she'd finished the gruesome tale, Robbie was sitting in a puddle of diarrhea, quite literally scared shitless. The two Roseys were hugging each other, crying with fear and oblivious to the horrible smell wafting through the room. Heather dutifully took Robbie away to clean him off in the sink, but she had seemed so _happy_ to do it, an emotion rarely exhibited by the overworked and overstressed nanny. The children hadn't slept at all that night, or the next, or the next. When they finally began collapsing out of stress and exhaustion during the day, Sonichu and Rosechu's inquiries to Heather were met with a brick wall of true Spanish, none of which they could understand. Of course the nanny could speak English, but this small victory had been worth risking her job. Anyway, the baby chus forgot about it within a week.

But now that horrible memory was back, and Christine's head was filled with frightening images of the Big Mean Person melting a tiny Rosey's face off, the Big Mean Person forcing dozens of Sonees and Roseys into a Mister Bucket and chopping them up to feed the other prisoners of Laughyland, the Big Mean Person ordering the two hellhounds to gobble up and maim any children who disobeyed…and most shocking of all, the Big Mean Person blinding a Rosey and burning out her eyes, then removing her armstubs, stumpfeet, and tongue…

If Christine had still possessed her eyes, they would have grown to the size of tennis balls by now. The final puzzle piece had fallen into place at last. Her little mouth fell open as she realized the horrific truth of what her tormenter and soon-to-be murderer was about to tell her.

The Legend smiled as he slowly rose to his feet and placed his hand on the washing machine's circular door, then leaned in close to the Rosey's ear so she could hear his final, bitterly cruel sendoff. Inch by inch, he began pushing the door shut, slowly sealing Christine inside for the last few excruciating minutes she had left to live.

"That's my secret, Shining Rosey," he whispered, and gave the door one last push. "_I'm_ BMP."

Al never heard Christine's shrill voice return with a vengeance, nor could he hear her final, unsurpassed screams of pure terror as her mind finally shattered into insanity, nor could he hear the frantic clanging and splashing from within the steamy, superheated drum of the washing machine. All he heard was a sharp _click_ as the automatic lock snapped shut, and a second, softer _click_ as he pushed the **START CYCLE**button on the control panel and stepped back to watch.

Inside, the drum began to spin, and boiling jets struck Christine from every conceivable angle, filling the empty space with superheated water and plunging the helpless, dismembered Rosey into a bubbling, steaming hell from which there was no escape. The plastic bag's zippered seal immediately burst, sending the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon tumbling out and into the blistering maelstrom. As if the lemon juice, salt, and heat weren't enough, Al had added a full bottle of OxiClean detergent to the washer, building off of Kevin's idea back at Soup Hotel #4.

Surrounded by liquid pain, Christine spun and spun like an ugly, bloody little blob of meat, swelling up as she was literally boiled alive by the stinging, surging wash. The broken bioelectric glands in her cheekspots fizzled and sparked and overloaded with more energy than she could have ever recharged by herself, electrocuting the entire washing machine and granting it an extra boost of power to continue giving the Rosey her bubble bath of death. And as her flesh expanded and popped off her bones, as her skin ruptured and burst apart in a cloud of blood, as the salt and citric acid in the water tore at her raw, unprotected body, and even as the final spark of life fizzled out of her little body, Christine's mind kept on disintegrating, leaving only a blubbering, gibbering, wretched creature behind to spin and bleed and suffer and drown in complete misery.

In the second before she finally expired and joined her mother, a distant scream echoed through the back of Christine's skull, a familiar voice that she hadn't heard speak to her inside her head since that day long ago when she'd chased the little frog through the pond in CWC-Central Park. It was a cry of anguish, a shriek of absolute failure, the sort of sound that a fatally poisoned man might make as he watched the only vial of antidote shatter before his eyes. Then came a sudden stab of something intangible, something massive and fierce, something that broke through the clouds of insanity and pierced the dying Rosey in the center of her tiny brain.

In that instant, she knew. It was the last thought she would ever have – a single thought that would repeat itself over and over in her broken mind as she whirled on down to the gates of hell, to an eternity of infinite suffering, more excruciating than anything Albert Ledger had conjured.

And when the silent scream finally ended, so too did Christine Rosey's life.

"Well, that was fun," mused Al to himself as he turned and left Christine to keep spinning and spinning until someone turned off the washing machine. He'd set it to run for as long as it had a constant power supply, so Sonichu's daughter would literally be boiled into oblivion by the time the true and original Electric Hedgehog Pokémon finally lost interest in pursuing the Picklemen. There wouldn't be much of the little Rosey left for her father to weep over…just a few scraps of boiled meat, clumps of adipose tissue, a jumbled skeleton, and a hell of a lot of blood.

_Rosechu, on the other hand…_ Al snickered as he pictured the look of horror on Sonichu's face upon finding his heartsweet naked and dead with her head smashed in. Her blood was still drying on the Jerkop's boots, and if he survived the final battle, Al would make sure he _never_wore them again. Maybe in a few years, they'd be worth a fortune. "The Boots That Stomped Rosechu."

Back in the kitchen, Steve and Kuri had made a bowl of popcorn together, and were now sitting at the table and watching Robbie flail around and shriek in unbearable pain as he struggled to purge the horrible burning sauce from his pudgy body. The little Sonee was still trapped in the glass jar, unable to climb the slippery walls to safety or escape from the rising tide of Break You Dead and excrement. Soon he would be facing death by literally drowning in his own molten shit. The Jerkops were force-feeding him _just_ enough of the sauce to fill up the jar, and judging by the wet splattering sounds coming from inside, the blazing liquid was passing right through him by now. It was one of the cruelest perpetual tortures that Al had ever seen…and he loved it.

As the red-orange and brown liquid reached Robbie's chin, the Sonee began to bob up and down like a fat yellow cork. For a moment, it seemed as if he would float to the top and avoid being immersed in the foul mixture. Before Steve or Kuri could act, Al stepped into the kitchen and pressed the plastic wrap back over the top, shoving Robbie's entire head below the surface. The submerged Sonee immediately let loose with a horrific bubbly wailing sound as his eyes, nose, and mouth were exposed to a bath of 16 million Scoville heat units. The sauce flooded in through every orifice, creating a horrendous in-and-out cycle as he continued to stress-shit himself.

"That," the Legend muttered, "is fucking _brilliant_. Let me guess…you still haven't started yet?"

The Jerkops grinned and nodded simultaneously. Glancing across the kitchen, Al noticed a large deep fryer warming on the counter, filled with a mixture of canola oil and the leftover Break You Dead. The bubbly, smoking tub was _just_ big enough to accommodate the body of a baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, and it didn't take a genius to figure out what Steve and Kuri had planned for Robbie's method of execution.

"Okay, that's it. Get him out before he drowns," Al suggested after another minute had passed.

"BWUHBWUHBWUHWUHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" blubbered the sauce-soaked Sonee as Kuri poked the injector claws of her tekko-kagi into the jar and pierced his belly, just enough to lift him out to safety. Covered from head to stumpfeet in a red and brown mixture of Break You Dead and his own feces, Robbie could only flail around blindly, screaming and crying. The Jerkop unceremoniously dumped him into the sink and turned both taps on at full force, blasting the little chu with a high-pressure stream of water. Kuri made sure to pour some dish soap into the puncture wounds on his tummy, scrubbing Robbie alternately with a rough sponge and some steel wool until the shrieking Sonee was sufficiently cleaned up and tenderized.

_BZZZT!_ The deep fryer buzzed loudly and a red light blinked on, just as Kuri finished cleaning the last drops of hot sauce out of Robbie's fur. A vicious, vengeful grin spread across Steve's face at the sound of the buzzer, while Al wisely adjourned to the Battle Bus to watch the show. The rest of CWCville would have to settle for the camera footage of each larva's death, but damn it, he was Albert Ledger, and he was going to witness the demise of the Sonichu brats firsthand.

"Remember to keep it under fifteen minutes," Al instructed the Jerkops as he ascended the steps to the bus. "I mean, this is fun and all, but we've still got a revolution to kick off."

"Look, Al, we know all that shit already," Steve interrupted as he dumped the bawling Sonee into a metal fryer basket and held it over the oil. "Trust me, there's still plenty of time for _this_."

_SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!_

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHH!"

Robbie Sonee shrieked and wailed, a pitiful high-pitched sound that only grew in its intensity the further Steve lowered him into the deep fryer. Millimeter by millimeter, the hot oil enveloped the soles of his sneakers and continued on toward the tops of his feet. Through the bubbling liquid, Steve could see the pair of battery-blue running shoes melting, fusing with the little Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's flesh while Robbie struggled and kicked and splashed around to no avail.

"WAAAAAAHHHH! NOOOOO! STAWP IT! STAWP IT! STAAAWWWWWP IIIITTTTTT! WAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" screamed the Sonee as he felt the oil seeping and sizzling through the gaps in his shoes to burn his vulnerable feet within. "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! MOMMEEEEEEEEEE! DADDEEEEEEEEEE! HEWP MWEEEEEEEEEE!" Trapped inside the steel mesh fryer basket that was usually meant to hold meat or potatoes, he could only flail and hop around helplessly, like someone forced to dance on hot coals, but much, _much_ worse. It was agony like he'd never felt before, like he'd never even imagined could possibly exist.

After about a minute of letting his captive's stumpfeet fry to a delicious golden-brown crisp, Steve pulled Robbie out of the oil and upended the basket, unceremoniously dumping the disgusting yellow fuzzball out onto a wooden cutting board. He reached for his kukri to finish the job, then stopped. No. Not yet. Emily, Blanca, and Richter hadn't put their best Jerkops out on the chopping block just so he could put down Sonichu's son with a simple decapitation. He and Kuri were going to _savor_ every last beautiful moment of this glorious evening.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" bawled Robbie as he stared in disbelief and horror at the two useless, lumpy blobs of fried flesh and melted plastic that had once been his beloved feet and his little blue sneakers. His diminuitive cholesterol-clogged heart pounded again and again in absolute fear, threatening to burst through his ribcage with every panicked, overworked beat.

"Vivian didn't say what condition the shoes had to be in, did she?" Steve asked as he picked up a Cutco steak knife and ran his finger along its serrated blade.

Kuri shook her head. The look in her eyes as she eyed the sharp utensil was one comparable to a gaze of pure lust. "Please, Steve. Not yet. Let me do something first."

Steve considered the offer for a moment, then smiled. "Well, as long as you let me watch."

"Watch? Steve, you're gonna be my lovely assistant for this magic trick."

"Wat awe you doing?" Robbie whimpered fearfully. "Stawp it! Weave me awoooooone!"

"Hold him down and open…_it_…up for me," ordered Kuri with a shudder of revulsion, ignoring her victim's pathetic pleas. Steve obediently pinned the Sonee to the board with a single hand. With his other, he drove the tip of his steak knife into the soft folds of skin that housed Robbie's internal genitals and forcefully sawed through the cartilaginous flap, splitting it open to reveal the baby chu's miniscule, abnormally-angled pickle and a tiny pair of undeveloped testes.

"EEEEEEEEEEAAAAAIIIIIIIIEEEEEEE!" screeched Robbie as a stream of blood squirted from the wound. Kuri giggled and waited for the little red geyser to subside, then poked it, driving one of her tekko-kagi's claws into the mutilated opening. As the Sonee screamed and kicked, she pushed the steel blade further in and hooked the tip around the base of his scrotum.

"NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOT MY PEE-PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

_RRRIP! _The claw sheared through Robbie's genitals in less than a second, lopping them off at the base. For a moment, Kuri just held the crotch flap open with her knife and stared in disgust at the limp, crooked red tube and the little sack of skin that contained his balls, ignoring the baby chu's wretched cries and screams as he flailed around and tried ineffectively to kick her with his useless fried feet. Satisfied, she poked another knife into her victim's crotch flap, pulled the repulsive mess out in one piece, and dumped it into the hot oil, smiling callously.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Robbie let out a desperate shriek, which immediately intensified when Kuri added some BYD and a few grains of kosher salt to the injury. The Sonee nearly passed out then and there, but since he possessed a powerful mixture of the same DNA as the original Sonichu and Rosechu, it was completely impossible for him to faint or die from blood loss. Most of his blood supply kept regenerating at an abnormally fast rate, feeding off his natural supply of baby fat for energy, as well as the specialized chemical in his heart that Chandler had deemed a Heart Level. All he could do was to shudder and scream and writhe on the cutting board, listening to his genitals sizzle and pop inside the big deep fryer.

It wasn't right! It wasn't fair! Daddy and Grandpa Chris had told him that he would have a family of his own someday, but now these big mean people had ripped his pickle right off! How could he do hanky-panky with a Rosechu when he evolved? Now he'd never have a Sweetheart from the Ground-Up of his own…unless Grandpa Chris could make everything all better! He _always_ knew how to make everything better! For a moment, Robbie tried to be brave and endure the pain, like his grandfather had bravely endured the slings and arrows of outrageous trolling.

Then he remembered the fact that his pickle had just been severed not half a minute ago.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" he screamed shrilly, gazing down in horror at the ragged flap of skin between his stumpfeet that was now squirting blood with every beat of his panicked heart. Robbie wailed and screeched again in shock and agony, wriggling and bleeding while Kuri flipped the useless reproductive organs onto their uncooked side with a pair of tongs and let them cook, humming a tune to herself while she watched the Sonee cry and his pickle fry.

_A necessity, really,_ she thought with a cruel laugh. It would almost have been enough to leave the Sonee a crippled, emasculated eunuch for the rest of his life, never to know the artificial love that a Rosechu would have provided him had he lived long enough to evolve. But on camera, that option was no longer possible. At least Robbie would die in complete misery, without his pickle.

"All done!" the Jerkop called out cheerfully after another few seconds. Grabbing two chopsticks, she plucked the stringy mess out of the oil and held it over the Sonee's face. "Eat up, Robbie!"

Before Robbie could protest, Kuri stuffed the flash-fried lumps of pickle meat and testicles right into his harelip mouth and grasped his chin and upper jaw in her hands. He spluttered and fought to spit them out, but the Jerkop was in full control of his toothless jaws now, forcing him to nibble and bite until the crispy meaty taste saturated the inside of his mouth. Eventually, his own insatiable hunger took over, and Kuri no longer needed to help the little chu chew.

"You ever had Rocky Mountain Oysters?" she asked Steve, stepping back to watch the show.

"Nope," replied the Jerkop. "And now I never will."

Robbie chewed and sobbed, savoring his pickle's rich flavor and smooth texture through its delicate fried coating. His tears gradually slowed and stopped, and bit by bit, he forgot what exactly it was that he'd been eating all this time. What he _did_ know was that it was good…it was really, _really_ good, like the delicious meals Mommy always prepared for him and his sisters. Smiling, he swallowed the mouthful of cooked genitalia and smacked his harelips in enjoyment. His mutilated crotch had stopped squirting blood, and the pain in his stumpfeet had died down to a dull ache now, the kind of ache he normally felt after he either tried to run really fast or tripped.

This wasn't so bad. Whenever Grandpa Chris visited, he had always made sure to tell him and his sisters about the necessity of recycling! All that Robbie had to do was wait for a little bit, and his body would just make him a new pickle out of the old one. Then he could still have his True and Honest Sweetheart from the Ground-Up when he evolved and not be a virgin with rage for the rest of his life! He'd zap to the extreme and run fast and save the day, just like his father!

"Hmm. Guess he liked it." Steve leaned in close to the Sonee's blank, grease-smeared face. "Did you wike dat tasty snack, Wobbie?"

"Uh huuuuhhh…" Lost in his hallucination, Robbie wasn't paying attention at all. "Awe we goin ta da hoss-pitaw, Daddee?"

Steve leaned toward Kuri. "Watch this." He pinched his nose with one hand and began speaking in a nasal, very whiny voice. "Yes partner; we are at CWCville General Hospital and there is a nice man named Doctor Steve waiting to fix you right up. He is going to make your feet all better!"

"Oh, Arceus," chuckled Kuri, and rolled her eyes. "This is gonna be good."

"YAY! I wuv you, Daddee!" Robbie squealed happily as Steve ducked down under the counter and rose up again with the Cutco knife in hand. This time, the voice was none but his own.

"Well now, little Robbie, what seems to be the problem?" he asked with mock kindness.

"Dis big mean pywat wif wun eye an dis nasty bwoo waydee wif howns bwoke my pee-pee an made my feet huwt wealwy bad!" the Sonee explained quickly, clutching the wound in his crotch with his stubs. "I need my feet fow wunning! Daddee said you'we gonna hewp me get betta!"

"Well, Daddy's right!" Steve replied, and smiled coldly. His soon-to-be patient didn't notice.

"My Daddee's _awways_ wight!" Robbie stated with his typical vexingly smug certainty while the Jerkop flipped him over onto his tummy. "Daddee's da owiginal Sonichu, an his daddy is Gwampa Chwis! An Daddee says dat wun day, I'm gonna wun as fast as Daddee, an Daddee's da fastewst!"

"As fast as Daddy, huh?" asked Steve as he positioned the steak knife right above the point where Robbie's left foot connected with his chubby little body. "You absolutely sure about that, Robbie?"

Robbie nodded eagerly and let out a squeal of joy. "YEAH! An Daddee says dat he's gonna teach me how ta wun wivvout twipping, 'cuz wun day I'll be as fast as-"

"Heh. No, you won't," laughed the Jerkop, and plunged the absurdly sharp blade into the stumpfoot's flesh, down through the crisp fried skin and gooey burnt plastic. "Not anymore."

"WWWWWWWAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Robbie screeched in shock and horror as the big steak knife sliced into the tenderized fatty meat of his precious, beloved foot. His fevered illusions of the hospital shattered instantly, and suddenly he was back in the bloody kitchen, staring up at Steve's merciless grin with his big terrified reptilian eyes.

"NO! NOOO! NOOOOOOO! I NEED MY FEET FOW WUNNING!" he squealed as the Jerkop cut deeper and deeper with every stroke. Steve was at the middle of Robbie's foot now, grinding the knife's serrated edge down against solid bone. The blade wasn't designed to slice through anything tougher than steak, so he instead worked his way in a circle until he'd cut a rough ring-shaped incision around the thick central foot bone. Robbie floundered and flopped around like an epileptic fish, thumping his armstubs uselessly against the blood-soaked wooden cutting board and shrieking like a miniature banshee. As his pain soared to new heights, the horrified Sonee felt a strange, sickening sensation building in his chubby belly, one he knew would result in…

"HUUUURRRRRGGGHHH!" Robbie promptly lost control and vomited in anguish, spewing up a burning mess of half-digested food, Break You Dead sauce, feces, and CWC Cola, along with the shredded, fried remains of his own genitals. For a moment, the Sonee's retching ceased, and he was struck by the faint, desperate hope that maybe, just maybe, if he reached it in time, he could recycle his severed pickle again and regenerate a new one...

...until Kuri speared the tiny scrap of meat on her tekko-kagi and plunged it into the bubbling grease once more, burning it until its entire mass had been reduced to little more than carbon and completely annihilating any lingering chance of reconstituting it. Laughing cruelly, the Jerkop withdrew the tiny blackened piece of burnt meat from the fryer, dangled it in front of Robbie's eyes, and finally crushed it into a black smear of ash on the countertop.

Robbie vomited again and again, emptying his churning stomach's greasy contents onto the cutting board while Steve hacked and sawed away in a futile attempt to sever the Sonee's foot. Having borne Robbie's weight for almost two years now, these bones were, ironically, the strongest ones in his pathetically-designed body. It would take more than a blade to sever them.

"Ah, screw this." The Jerkop withdrew the knife and nodded at Kuri. "Help me find a cracker."

"Cwackewr?" Robbie managed to fight through the nausea long enough to get a single word out. Steve had inadvertently triggered a delicious memory of a few months back in the autumn of 2008, when he went camping out in the woods with Sonichu and Uncle Wild and cousin Sandy. They all went fishing and hiking (Robbie made it about ten yards down the trail before he got too stressed and Sonichu had to carry him the rest of the way on his back) and did other fun things like sing songs around a campfire and play hide-and-seek. Robbie hid in the cooler and got stuck, so he wasn't found until early the next day when Sonichu opened it up to store a freshly-caught Magikarp. Later that night, once Robbie had been dried off and fed, Sonichu and Uncle Wild made another fire and toasted marshmallows to make a delicious treat called "s'mores." They'd given Robbie a huge three-layer s'more, almost as high as his chin, with sugary Graham crackers on the outside and big gooey golden-brown marshmallows and melted chocolate filling the inside. He'd eaten four in total and went to bed in his Sonee-sized sleeping bag and little blue pajamas, happy as a clam and stuffed to the brim with sweet goodness.

"Awe…we m…ma…makin…s'mowes?" he asked, clenching his toothless gums together as waves of burning agony flared through his foot. Kuri and Steve ignored him again and instead focused their attention on rummaging through the utensil drawers beside the sink. Finally, Steve located the object of his desire – a silver-plated lobster cracker – and passed it to his squadmate.

"Thanks!" said Kuri, and gleefully fastened the tool over Robbie's bloody, exposed foot bone.

"Dat's notta Gwam cwackewr! DAT'S NOTTA GWAM CWACKEWR! NOOO! NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOO! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" A fresh wave of tears poured from Robbie's eyes as he screamed and cried, knowing what was about to happen and, even worse, that there was nothing he could do to prevent it. With a loud _crunch_, Kuri smashed right through the stubborn bone, splintering it beneath the cold hard metal of the lobster cracker. Robbie's fried foot fell free with a last spurt of blood and lay steaming on the cutting board. Kuri picked it up and sucked out the marrow with glee, ran the entire greasy, blood-smeared mess under the faucet for five seconds, nibbled on a few choice bits of meat, then finally dropped the foot and its melted plastic shell into a large Ziploc bag labeled **ROBBIE SONEE'S SHOES/FEET**. A smaller notation beneath read **KEEP REFRIGERATED. DO NOT EAT**.

"MY FOOWT! MY FOOOOOWT! GIMME BACK MY FOOOOOOOOWT!" squealed Robbie, and squeezed his eyes shut as tight as he could. This was all just some horrible dream, and Mommy or Daddy or Cera was going to appear any minute now to take care of everything for him like they always did when he got stressed! But when he opened his eyes and looked around hopefully, Sonichu was nowhere in sight, his mother was gone, and Cera was giggling like a lunatic, high on sugar after Kevin and Jexis had fed her nearly two pounds of Cera Candy. It wasn't as if she couldn't hear Robbie…she simply didn't care about her brother's suffering when compared to the prospect of so much yummy, sugary goodness that she so richly deserved after enduring so much stress.

Anger, stress, and annoyance surged through Robbie as he listened to his hyperactive sister laughing and singing Britney Spears songs to herself. Why wasn't she coming to save him like she always did in his dreams? Roseys were meant to look after a Sonee's every need, just like Grandpa Chris and Rosechu had told him! He was in pain! He was tired and stressed! Why was Cera being so lazy? She was his big sister! She was supposed to be taking care of everything for him, since he didn't have a sweetheart to do that yet, and besides, he was just a helpless little baby! Nothing was ever his fault! It was all _her_ fault that these jerks were hurting him so much!

"CEWAH!" he shrieked. "CEWAH, STAWP PWAYING AN HEWP MWEEEEEEE!"

"Hee hee hee!" Cera giggled from the other room, completely oblivious to her brother's cries.

"You know what? That just seemed like _way_ too much trouble, Kuri," Steve sighed, and grabbed hold of Robbie's other shoe. The partially dismembered Sonee tried to kick Steve's fingers in a heroic gesture of defiance, but with only one foot, this action was about as effective as a one-armed blind man trying to row a leaky boat with only one paddle. The Jerkop held Robbie down with his other hand and began pulling, firmly at first, then harder, and harder, and harder, until…

_CRRRRRRRAAACCK!_

"AAAAAAAAAAGHGHGHGHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Steve stumbled backward and slammed into the opposite wall as Robbie's stubborn right foot finally ripped free of his pelvis. Threadlike ligaments and split tendons dangled from the rounded white nub of bone protruding from the Sonee's sneaker – remnants of the horribly-designed skeletal system that had hindered Robbie for the entirety of his short life. Handing the hot lump of meat and plastic to Kuri, Steve turned back to his screaming, filthy, vomit-splattered victim.

"Hey Robbie," he chuckled evilly. "Remember what you told me back in June at the Shopping Center? Something like, 'one day, I'll be as fast as my Daddy, even though I trip a lot?'"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAAAA AAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Robbie screeched in utter misery, squeezing his teary eyes shut as the Jerkop's cruel words sank in. He didn't want to believe it. Part of him wanted to think it was all still part of the "dweeeeeeam." And yet, when he opened his eyes and stared down at the bloody ragged mess where his oversized stumpfeet had once protruded from, Robbie knew in the deepest, darkest, most true and honest corner of his heart, that he would _never_ be as fast as Daddy anymore…not now, not ever. Unspeakable despair and self-loathing crept over him, wrapping around his maimed, misshapen body like a cold wet blanket. There would be no more attempts to run, no more gleeful waddling in circles while Mommy and Daddy cheered him on, no more games of tag with his sisters, no more zappin' adventures…no more spunk and speed for the rest of his life. He'd been crippled forever, stripped of his birthright in less than five minutes at the hands of Steve and Kuri.

For the first time in his life, Robbie tasted the bitter sting of a reality beyond the saccharine, carefree, and perpetual childhood that his grandfather had engineered for him. These intruders had taken Nanny Heather and his family away, castrated him, and now had separated him from his own feet – every homebred Sonee's most highly prized and valued physical feature. Robbie had never felt so utterly wretched in his life – like some deformed, disgusting freak instead of the happy, cute, innocent, spunky little baby that Daddy and Grandpa Chris had always told him he was. There was nothing left in his future but torture, pain, and suffering, and every minute…nay, every _millisecond_ of the long road to his inevitable, unspeakably nightmarish death was paved with horrors several light years beyond his meager understanding of horror. A new and frightening sound began to emerge from the little Sonee's throat – a shrill, soulless wail that could best be described as what one would expect the damned to cry out in the fires of hell.

"WHYYYYYYY?" he screamed, desperate for an answer…_any_ answer…anything that might explain why his tiny body, his Heart Level, and his very life had all been shattered in one vicious blow, like delicate crystal glass against a rock. "WWWHHHHHHHYYYYYYYYYYYYY?"

"Oh, a lot of reasons," replied Steve calmly as he scrubbed at Robbie's fur with a wet washcloth and cleaned away the vomit and blood. His voice shook with suppressed fury, fury for the friends he'd lost and the atrocities he'd seen. "I'd name a few, but I think you'd just forget them in a few seconds. Come here." He plucked Robbie off the cutting board once he was clean and carried the wretched Sonee into the living room, towards the TV. For a split second, Robbie foolishly dared to hope for another screening of one of his most beloved films in the whole world. Then Kuri's boot crashed down on the Sonichu family's treasured_ Mary Poppins _and _The Adventures of the American Rabbit _VHS tapes. Again and again, she stomped down as hard as she could, until she'd reduced them to a pile of plastic scraps and crumpled coils of film.

Robbie whimpered brokenly as both of his favorite movies were smashed apart beneath Kuri's feet. Bit by bit, the Jerkops were tearing him down into a hollow shell of a Sonee, shattering the idyllic, sheltered life he'd enjoyed for far too long. His pathetic airheaded misogynistic excuse for a mother now lay naked and headless in the basement, while the swollen remnants of Christine's mutilated corpse spun endlessly in the garage's washing machine. Cera floated in the middle of a selfish, candy-induced stupor, destined for the most gruesome fate of all once the Jerkops finally decided to end her life. And his father…his father still hadn't come to save the day.

"Daddee's gonna wescue me!" he shouted in a sudden burst of confidence and hope that sheared right through the thick curtain of misery. "Gwampa Chwis's got a pwan ta wescue awl of us! An den my Daddee's gonna zap awl of you ta da extweem, 'cuz he's da fastewst an da stwongest!"

"Your Grandpa Chris," sneered Kuri as Steve roughly dropped Robbie's legless, neutered body on the floor right in front of the screen, "is currently shoving his own Sonichu medallion up his anus because a thirteen year-old boy disguised as his dead sister told him to. Your father's out on a fruitless pickle hunt." She narrowed her eyes. "_No one's_ coming to save you, Robbie. _Nobody_ cares about you. _Nobody_ loves you. We killed your mommy and that repulsive purple blob you call a sister. And after you're dead, we'll kill Cera _and_ Sonichu _and_ Grandpa Chris, too! Yay!"

Had the Sonee's feet and pickle still been attached to his body, he might have been a little more resistant to the idea of his own mortality. Still, to the naïve and stubborn Robbie, he was only an innocent little baby who deserved only the most loving care and treatment for being so adorable and spunky, as well as for being the leader of the second Chaotic Combo. While they might have broken a real child, the Jerkop's cruel words simply bounced off Robbie as he lost focus on her and let his mind drift back to his mutilated lower body. Why were his feet gone? Why had they ripped out his pickle? Why weren't they taking care of him? He was so small and helpless!

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" he wailed from the pain, clutching his shredded crotch with his armstubs and trying to wiggle backward away from Kuri and Steve. Without his feet, this task was rather difficult. "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

_Vrrrrmvrrrmvrrrrmvrrrmvrrrmvrrrmvrrrmvrrrmvrrrmvrr rmvrrrmvrrrmvrrrmvrrrmvrrrm!_

Robbie flopped over onto his stomach just in time to see his little yellow go-kart - the special present that his father had given him for Christmas – zoom out of the kitchen with a fuzzy pink Rosey sitting in it and driving with her armstubs. For a moment, a brief, hopeful moment, the Sonee's face lit up in desperate joy. It was Cera! Cera had come to rescue him, just like in his dream!

_"HI WOBBIE!"_ shouted SUZI, waving to Robbie as she spun the kart in a circle and parked it right in front of him, then hopped off. _"Hi, Wobbie! Don't wowwy, I'm gonna wescue you!"_

"YAY! SOOZEE!" shrieked Robbie, and reached out to grab her stumpfoot. His armstub met nothing but carpet. Confused and stressed, he crawled forward and reached out again, but still couldn't touch his beloved heartsweet. Looking back, he screamed in terror as he realized that Kuri had grabbed him by his stubby tail and was now holding him back, preventing him from ever reaching SUZI. Desperately pulling at the soft carpet with his stubs, he felt the Jerkop's nails digging into the tender flesh of his hindquarters, threatening to rip his tail right off.

"Difficult task, isn't it, Robbie?" she chuckled. "And I thought you were such a brave baby!"

Robbie bawled and panted and struggled onwards in vain, pawing the floor as sweat dripped from his face and soaked into his fuzzy yellow pelt. By the time he finally gave up and collapsed, he'd progressed a grand total of zero inches toward SUZI. Completely exhausted, the Sonee just lay there, blubbering and quivering, drenched in sweat, his tiny body burning with pain.

"Arceus, you're pathetic." Kuri pulled back on her victim's tail and hoisted the plump little chu into the air. Too weak to even scream at the immense pain in his rear, Robbie began making a hoarse moaning noise and jerking himself around erratically as he was borne aloft. Gravity would have eventually pulled his heavy body free of his tail, but before that could happen, Kuri set him down right next to the yellow go-kart and winked to SUZI. "Oh no! Steve, he got away!"

"YAY!" screamed Robbie, utterly convinced that his weak little struggles had caused the Jerkop to lose her grip on him. He looked up at SUZI with desperate relief. "SOOZEE, HEWP MEEE!"

_"Gwab da kawt, Wobbie!"_ the LIESA unit instructed as she hopped in and gunned the engine. Robbie obediently curled his armstubs around the back of the go-kart and hugged it, thinking that Suzy was going to speed off into the sunset and leave all the nasty Jerkops behind to shake their fists and bemoan the loss of their heroic, spunky victim, just like all of his daddy's enemies did.

"Wet's go!" he whined. "Sooooooooooooooozeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee, why awen't we dwiving away?"

"Oh no you don't!" Kuri's fingers fastened around Robbie's tail once again as SUZI eased her hydraulic stumpfoot down on the gas pedal. "Where do you think _you're_ going, little Sonee?"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" screeched Robbie. His tail was bleeding at the base, threatening to rip free of his pelvis. SUZI accelerated forward while the Jerkop pulled back, stretching the screaming Sonee out until his fat little body had nearly reached the breaking point. Either way, something was going to have to give.

"Well, this is certainly a stressful situation," commented Kuri. She leaned in close to Robbie's long black-tipped ears. "Looks like you've got to make a choice, wittle baby. You can either let go and lose your go-kart, or you could keep holding on. You're gonna lose your tail and it's gonna hurt really bad, but you'll get your kart _and_ Suzy Rosey!"

Agonized tears spilled from Robbie's reddened eyes as he clung to the kart. "WAAAAAHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOO! WET ME GO AN WET ME HAWVE SOOZEE WOSEY AN MY KAWT! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH H!"

"Always another way out, isn't there?" The Jerkop sighed and tugged back, hard. "Too bad!"

_RRRIP! CRACK!_

"EEEEEEIIIIIIIIAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Screaming and thrashing around in a fit of agony, Robbie felt his little yellow stub of a tail rip right out at the base, leaving a torn, squirting hole in his plump posterior. The shock and trauma of Kuri's cruel amputation forced him to release his hold on the go-kart, which sped away into the kitchen and out of sight, leaving the Sonee on the floor. Alone, helpless, and missing a tail, he couldn't do much more than lie there, shrieking in misery.

Steve knelt down and patted Robbie on the head, ruffling his headspikes just like Sonichu always did. "You know, she gave you a chance. You could've let go if you weren't such a greedy little spoiled shit. But NO, you had to have your tail AND Suzy AND your precious kart, didn't you?"

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" Robbie screamed, pounding the floor with his armstubs.

Kuri raised two fingers and poked him in the eyes with her nails. "Shut it, you fuzzy little bastard."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" Robbie screamed, louder still.

"All I ever hear from you is just _complain_,_ complain_,_ complain_," continued Steve with a cruel grin. He glanced up as the soft putter of the go-kart's motor approached through the kitchen. "Oh yes. And Robbie…there's something we never told you about your lovely heartsweet…"

SUZI pulled the kart up in front of the Jerkops and their captive, then heaved a massive black object out of the back. Robbie's crying ceased as soon as he recognized his PlayStation 3. Humming a little tune to herself, the LIESA unit quickly plugged the game system into the TV.

_"Hi Wobbie!" _she cried happily, waving to the quivering Sonee as she waddled up to him, flung her little armstubs around him, and hauled him upright. _"Wanna watch a movee wif me?"_

"YAY! MooveeEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! " Robbie's happy squeal at the prospect of a movie was replaced by a piercing shriek of terror as SUZI slammed her face against his and activated her eye-screens, projecting a frightening stream of images directly into the Sonee's terrified eyes. It was a particularly special creation of hers – a manic assortment of disturbing and brutally violent clips from _Braindead_, _Guinea Pig: Flower of Flesh and Blood_, _Salo_, _Cannibal Holocaust_, _Eraserhead_, and anime like _Genocyber_, _Elfen Lied_, and_Devilman_, all intermixed with the most explicit samples of gay porn and yaoi.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!" the Sonee screamed, his entire body spasming and his eyes bleeding from the barrage of gore and penises that the LIESA unit had spliced together for him. "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH!" He attempted to squeeze his eyes shut and block out the horrors, but Kuri swiftly grabbed his eyelids and held them open while Steve administered drops of contact lens solution to keep them from drying out. Robbie was being forced to watch every single second of the montage, and the last time SUZI had checked, it was about half an hour long, half an hour of nonstop homosexuality and unspeakable violence, designed specifically by her and Kuri as an interrogation tool for male chus.

Never before had the LIESA unit used it on a male _baby_ chu, though. The results, to say the least, were extremely interesting to her from a scientific perspective. If the Break You Dead cleansing by Steve and Kuri hadn't purged his entire digestive system of everything solid and liquid, Robbie might very well have reenacted his infamous meltdown at the Shopping Center, when SUZI had broadcast her montage of gay porn. As such, his reflexive vomiting and shitting ended up resulting in only a strangled gagging noise and a few brief farts. There was simply nothing left to purge. It didn't seem possible, but the Jerkops had emptied his body completely.

Finally, mercifully, after thirty minutes of torment, SUZI shut off her eye-screens and let Robbie fall to the floor. The petrified Sonee sniffled and cried some more, wiping his bloody eyes with his armstubs in an attempt to scrub them clean of the homo images he had just witnessed. His infantile mind had nearly been liquefied under the unrelenting visual and mental assault, temporarily lobotomizing the parts of his brain meant to control fear and anxiety. Trembling, he attempted to fall back on his grandfather's tried and true technique of imagining the gay thoughts dissolving in his stomach acid, but said stomach had been completely emptied of said acid a long, long time ago. With no way of removing the images from his broken brain, he lay there, twitching and making little "guhhhh-guuhhhh" noises while the structure of his nervous system automatically pieced itself back together due to his healing factor. Gradually, the capacity for thought returned, and he simply let his mind wander away again, pretending he was on one of Sonichu's zappin' adventures. The contents of the movie were quickly forgotten.

What was _not_ forgotten, however, was the realization that SUZI had plugged her USB tail into his beloved PlayStation 3, and was systematically wiping out all of his PSN account information, saved game data, and Trophies, while smashing his copy of _Sonic the Hedgehog 2006_ to bits.

"W…WA…WAH…WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

The sheer volume of Robbie's hysterical screams nearly blew out the Jerkops' ears then and there.

"Time to die, partner!" Steve snatched up the Sonee in one hand, lifted him off the ground, and headed for the kitchen while SUZI toddled back to her go-kart and gleefully resumed puttering around the living room. Robbie weighed in at just under twenty-five pounds – a disgustingly heavy amount for his species, but thankfully his body was also densely compact and incredibly tiny, at just a foot tall. Carrying him wasn't the least bit difficult for the battle-hardened Jerkop.

"NOOOO! NOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Robbie wailed, and tried to wiggle free, but Steve only squeezed the Sonee more tightly, poked his kukri through the bloody flap of skin that had once housed his victim's internal genitals, and twisted it violently, ripping open the grievous wound once again. Robbie screamed shrilly as fat drops of blood seeped from the horrific injury and dripped down to the floor, staining the ugly off-color blue carpet with splotches of dark red.

Why wasn't Daddy coming to rescue him? What could be more important than saving the life of his only son, his personal pride and joy and the most beloved of his three children? Robbie couldn't save himself, Mommy was down in the basement, Christine was somewhere else, and Cera was being all lazy and selfish, so why wasn't Daddy taking care of everything like he was supposed to do? Grandpa Chris often said that Sonichu was known for last-minute rescues, but now it seemed like Robbie's own last minute had already begun. The Sonee looked around frantically, searching for a familiar flash of yellow fur or a spinning blur of large blue sneakers as his oversimplified emotional spectrum hovered somewhere between terror and stubborn hope.

"WET ME GOOOOOO!" Robbie shrieked in desperation, and began pounding Steve's fingers with his puny armstubs. Kuri crept up behind the Sonee with her bottle of Break You Dead in hand, applied it generously to both of her thumbs, and gleefully shoved them right into his bulbous, repulsive lizard eyes. Robbie squealed in horrible burning pain and tried to bat her thumbs away, but the Jerkop kept pushing forward, harder and harder, massaging the super-hot sauce into the eyeballs until she could feel them about to give way and pop. Satisfied, she withdrew to let Robbie scream and paw at his reddened, watery eyes for a while. If Steve was planning to dispatch the baby chu in the manner she thought he was going to, Robbie needed to see every single second of his demise, or else their efforts would have been all for naught.

The deep fryer was still bubbling and smoking like a witch's cauldron when the Jerkops returned to the drab, dull-colored kitchen. How ironic, Steve thought, that Robbie should end his life in a manner befitting food when he himself regularly consumed more in one week than an adult hobo living in a Soup Hotel ate in four months. The sheer wastefulness of the Sonichu family was utterly sickening. Steve set Robbie down on the counter, drew his kukri, and pricked him right in his plump tummy. The little Sonee cried out and clutched his burning eyes as blood squirted into his peach-colored belly fur. Steve nearly succumbed to his desire to slit Robbie open and see if he could actually turn Sonichu's son completely inside out, but decided against it. What he had planned would be _much_ more entertaining…and much worse for Robbie in the end.

Seizing the Sonee by his fuzzy black-tipped ears, Steve picked him up off the table and lifted his tiny, battered body over the deep fryer so that they were face to face, betwixt life and death. Robbie let out a pitiful scream as his ears wrenched against the top of his head. The oil was splashing beneath him like a cauldron full of molten gold. To fall in meant certain death, and it felt as if his ears were going to tear loose any moment now.

"Well, here's where it ends," he sighed in disappointment. "Look at yourself, Robbie. See, that's the reason why I didn't take out your eyes or anything. I wanted you to see what we did to you. No feet. No pickle. No Daddy. No hope. No future. Pathetic. A virgin to the end." He paused and smiled. And you know something, Robbie Sonee? I think this just might be my masterpiece."

"_Our_ masterpiece," Kuri corrected him, and applied a squirt of BYD to the dripping wound between the stumps of Robbie's severed legs, thus doubling the volume of his agonized screams.

"_Our_ masterpiece. So Robbie," Steve addressed the dangling, shrieking chu in a frighteningly calm voice, "do you still want to know _why_ we do it? _Why_ we go out of our way to make you abominations suffer and die? _Why _we killed Mommy and little Christine?" He paused and sighed in exasperation. "Who am I kidding? You just want to know _why_ _you_, right? It's all about _you_."

Through his tears and the fiery pain in his head and crotch, Robbie somehow managed a strangled squeak.

A vicious grin spread across the Jerkop's face, and for a moment, it almost seemed as if the kitchen's temperature had dropped a few degrees.

"Because you're what Chandler always wanted to be," he answered, delivering the prepared speech that he'd been working on for the past year, memorizing it for this exact moment. Robbie wouldn't understand it, but the viewers would. "A stunted, cutesy, loathsome little grub with two disgusting female stereotypes for playmates. No responsibility, no discipline, no consequences, no growing up, nothing but innocence and ignorance and an eternal childhood full of hugs and smiles and laughter and games and _Mary Poppins_ and a perfectly _awful_ family." Steve chuckled. "We know your grandpa, wittle Wobbie. We know how his mind works. From the moment you hatched, he's been living out his fantasies through you because he and his worthless parents were all too repulsive and lazy and stupid to give him a childhood of his own. He put so much of himself into you that he ended up turning you into the avatar of his ideal youth. He can't live forever as a human, so why not spend eternity as a Sonee, huh? Just like he always wanted."

"As for your daddy…" Kuri stepped in to give Steve a much-needed break from his recited rant. "Well, he's killed hundreds, maybe even_thousands_ of innocent people because your grandpa told him to. He only spawned you and set up this lie you're living because your grandpa told him to. You were _never_ gonna be as fast as him…how could you, when your grandpa made him and your mommy start adding Everstone powder to your food? He's worthless, spineless, a complete and utter failure. Just like Grandpa Chris. Just like you. And by the time your daddy realizes we tricked him, you'll be Kentucky Fried Chu. Don't worry, we'll send him down to join you soon enough. I have a feeling you two are going to have one hellof an interesting confrontation."

"Pity we won't be there to see it." Steve raised his kukri and pressed its razor edge against the little Sonee's right ear, just as the horrible reality of the Jerkops' words finally began to penetrate Robbie's underdeveloped brain. "And the honest truth is…_I've got no idea why we do all this sick shit_. But it's just so much fun that we just can't seem to stop finding new ways to slaughter you all. And now it's my…" He turned and gave Kuri a resolute smile. "Now it's _our_ turn."

"WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH! WET ME GOOOOOOOOOOO! PWEEEEEEEEEEEASE!"

Steve paused. The edge of his kukri had pricked the Sonee's ear, drawing blood. "All right, Robbie. I'm feeling generous, so I'll let you choose. Either I slice your ears off and let you fall into the Prickly-Wickly Pit, or I'll just drop you in. It's up to you. So what's it gonna be?"

Robbie flailed his armstubs pathetically, screaming as his infantile brain tried to process the Jerkop's offer through the waves of pain in his ears. The choices weren't fair! There wasn't a third, easier option! It was just so hard and so stressful for him to cope with such a difficult-

"Five seconds, Robbie," Steve continued, glancing at the clock on the stove. "Slice or drop?"

"WAAAAHHHH! WAAAAHHHH! NO SWICE! NO DWOP! WET ME GOOOOOOO!"

The Jerkop sighed and rolled his eye. "There _is_ no third option, you naïve little moron."

"YES DERE IS! WAAAAAAAHHH!" wailed the stubborn Sonee, clinging to his own desperate reality in the face of certain death. He'd thought up a _much_ better option than both of the stupid choices, which meant that Steve _had _to let him go now! "WAAAAHHH! WET ME GOOOO-"

_Shick!_

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" Robbie screeched as the sharp steel blade sliced his ear off at the base. The bloodied yellow and black triangle dropped straight into the deep fryer and began to sizzle violently, just like his genitals had. The sheer amount of pain was unbelievable - almost unimaginable. All of the weight from his unnaturally dense and chubby body was pulling down on his one remaining ear. Robbie knew that he had only a few seconds until it too would rip loose, and send him plummeting into the bubbling cauldron just like one of the unfortunate Sonees and Roseys in Grandpa Chris's stories about the Jerkops or homos or Mary Lee Walsh.

With only seconds separating him from the end of his life, Robbie's stressed, frenzied mind somehow managed to come up with a last, even more desperate attempt at self-preservation. Opening his eyes as wide as they would go until he thought he looked sufficiently cute like his parents and grandfather constantly told him he was, he stared pleadingly at Steve in probably the most misguided attempt to garner pity that any Sonee or Rosey had ever tried in all of history.

"WET ME GO!" he begged pathetically as tears streamed unchecked down his face. His ear was tearing loose, hanging by only a few strips of skin. "PWEEEEEEEEEEASE! I…I WUV YOU!"

Steve gazed at the wriggling Sonee affectionately, but there was no mercy in either his icy eye or his chilling smile. "Go to hell, Robbie."

_RRRRRIP!_

"EEEEEEAAAAAGGGHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA-"

_SPLASH! SSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! _

Lashing out with his kukri, Steve delivered six surgically precise cuts to Robbie's obese body and spun away as it tore free of his ear and slipped right out of the little yellow-and-brown pelt, sending the partially-skinned Sonee plummeting downward with a screech of terror, pain, and surprise. Like a chubby little blob of bloody fat, Robbie hit the oil with a massive splash, sending white-hot drops flying in all directions. Kuri ducked behind the counter and covered her head, but managed to avoid being burned. As the sizzling faded away, the Jerkops began to hear a new sound, a wonderful, _beautiful_ sound…a sound of ultimate suffering. Steve and Kuri's hearts had made that sound when Chandler's creations had murdered their friends and loved ones in cold blood. The son of Sonichu made it now.

"EEEEEEAAAGGHGGHEEEAAGHAAAAGHEEEEEEEEEAAAAIIIIIIII IIEEEEEEEEEEEAAAGGHGGHEEEAAGHAAAAGHEEEEEEEEEAAAAII IIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!"

Robbie sat neck-deep in the tub of boiling grease, shrieking horrifically as the deep fryer began cooking him from every direction. Angry red boils and blisters rose and burst by the hundreds, leaving large bloody discolored patches of flesh as they exploded. Screaming, the hoglet made a weak attempt to grab the edge and pull himself out to safety, but the oil was much too slippery for him to grip anything, even with his natural static cling. Beneath the surface, his plump little body expanded and hissed as his juices turned to steam and his substantial fat supply melted like butter in a skillet. His abnormal physiology was literally frying him alive, both inside and out.

There were no more tears from the little Sonee now …no more whining or pleading, no attempts to escape or fight back…just pain and fire and raw, unspeakable terror.

As his exposed, underdeveloped muscles grew weaker and weaker in the immense heat, Robbie sank lower and lower into the burning, sizzling hell-bath. His armstubs slid beneath the surface, and through the superheated oil, he could see them both swelling up, feel them tearing open like well-cooked hot dogs to reveal the creamy fat and tender meat within, and beneath that, the small prehensile bones and tendons that kept his rudimentary limbs from simply hanging at his sides like limp noodles. The little chu screamed again and again, his shrill voice reaching a volume that Steve and Kuri had previously thought unattainable. His frantic cries slowly grew more hysterical, more frenzied, shifting back through two years of disgusting baby-talk to the primordial stage of his infancy when he knew no words other than his own species' name.

"NOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOO! AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEE! AAAIIEEEAAAAAUUGHHEEEE! AAAUUUGGGONEEEEEEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

And all the while, his former nanny looked down on him from the Battle Bus, weeping with hysterical satisfaction and shouting a vicious stream of violent Spanish curses at the dying baby chu. Her life of servitude to the Sonichu family had lasted over two years…two years of scrubbing the counters and floors when Robbie accidentally befouled them, wiping smears of food from his fat little face while he stuffed more and more down his throat, changing his urine-soaked bedsheets, helping him go to the bathroom, listening to his vapid, insipid, infuriating stories about how he was going to be so strong and fast and heroic one day, watching _Mary Poppins_ with him and his sisters several times a day, and countless other nightmarish tasks. Now she stood there, watching him burn alive, laughing a cold, cruel laugh as her disgusting little charge shrieked in agony.

Such was her vengeance – the bitter, long-awaited vengeance of Heather Iglesias.

The oil was licking at Robbie's face, enveloping the tips of his lower headspikes in hissing gold magma. Through a red and black haze, he began to hear sounds in the distance, even though his severed ears were now floating mere inches away from him…sounds of laughter and his family's familiar voices. It was a beautiful spring day, and he was back at CWC-Central Park with his mother and father and his two sisters, waddling in circles while they all looked on with pride.

"Go Wobbie!" Cera squealed, clapping her armstubs together in delight. "YAY! Go Wobbie!"

"Wobbie's da fastewst! YAY!" shrilled Christine, then quickly returned to gazing into her little hand mirror and sighing at the sight of her reflection. "Mommee, am I a pwetty Wosey?"

"Yes you are, Christine," said Rosechu with a beaming smile, "because you're a shiny Rosey!" She turned to the Sonee. "And I am so proud of you, Robbie! My spunky little baby!"

"Keep going, partner!" Sonichu encouraged his son. "You are getting faster every day, and when you grow up, you are going to save CWCville from all the homos and jerks who want to ruin it!"

_Dat's wight…_ Robbie thought with his last shred of coherency as his head sank beneath the bubbling, churning surface of the oil. Somehow, even his dying thoughts manifested in that twee voice. _Wun day, I'll be as fast as my Daddee, even dough I twip a wot._

And suddenly, horrifically, his father's smiling face burst into flame. Robbie screamed in shock as he watched fire erupt from Sonichu's fused eyes, from his mouth, from his ears and nose and cheekspots, consuming and scorching away the flesh to reveal a melted, dripping, bloody skull. A piercing screech, like that of some demonic bird of prey, echoed across the park as Rosechu was engulfed by the fire, her dress blazing, her eyes melting into bubbling goo…

"MOMMMEEEEEEEEE! DADDDEEEEEEEEE!" shrieked the terrified Sonee, tripping and waddling his way toward his parents as their bodies burst open and collapsed into ashes. Now Cera and Christine were burning too, squirming and wriggling on the ground while their pudgy bodies danced with flames and their torsos ruptured and exploded outward and disgorged great swarms of maggots that all bore Grandpa Chris's face. And all Robbie could do was to scream and scream and scream until fire gushed from his throat and incinerated his tiny body from the inside out.

CWCville burned. 14 Brunchville Lane burned. CWC-Central Park burned. Sonichu burned. Rosechu burned. Cera Rosey burned. Christine Rosey burned. And at last, Robbie Sonee burned.

It took a total of three full minutes for the heat of the deep fryer to work its way through the thick layer of protective fat cushioning Robbie's skull and finally bake his tiny brain into oblivion, but to the dying Sonee, every second seemed to last a thousand years. Submerged completely in what felt like a vat of liquid fire, his torment was simply impossible to describe or explain in any sort of intimate detail. Robbie floated in the anti-nirvana, a state of mind that knew only terror and agony. Even worse, Chris had forgotten (among many, _many_ other things) to genetically engineer a pain limit into the nervous systems of the Sonichu children, so each passing second brought with it a tenfold increase in the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokemon's suffering.

Drifting in a world of hellish torment beyond his infantile understanding of pain, Robbie smiled in utter insanity as he felt his own eyeballs boil, shrivel, and rupture inside their sockets one by one. Daddy hadn't been there to save him…but maybe he could save himself if he ran really fast!

The ragged, bony stumps that had once been connected to Robbie's feet twitched a few times, then began to jerk erratically up and down through some last-ditch spark of energy from his own overcooked nervous system. In his mind, he was running, running, running away from the evil Jerkops who had hurt him so much and that nasty old witch Mary Lee Walsh who'd shattered his Grandpa Chris's Heart Level down to zero. They were all too slow and too stupid to catch him now!

Bursting with intense feelings of smug joy and elation, the Sonee waddled and waddled and waddled as fast as his little blue-sneakered feet could carry him. He laughed and squealed as the wind whistled through his headspikes and soft, tall blades of grass brushed his chubby sides. It had been so much hard work, but he was finally doing it! Finally, he was running as fast as…

_"Oof!"_ Robbie tripped and fell into oblivion, tumbling down through the field and into a dark void that yawned open, seemingly out of nowhere, to receive him. This time, there was no soft bed of grass to land on, no solid ground to break his fall, no Daddy to catch him and keep him safe and tell him that everything would be okay. There was only black silence, and nothing more.

Then the world exploded, leaving nothing but pain. In that instant, Robbie knew what death was.

_"DADDDDDDEEEEEEEEEE! HEEEEEWWWWWWWWWP MWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"_

Robbie just kept on waddling and waddling and waddling all the way to hell, screaming his final cries of hopeless, excruciating misery as he plunged headlong into the eternal abyss. Just before his last few surviving brain cells finally overheated and died, they were racked by two colossal events: a blinding surge of emotion and realization…and a bitter stab of pure, absolute betrayal.

At long last, the fire consumed him, and Robbie Sonee was no more.

Steve let the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon cook a few seconds longer, then switched off the fryer and handed the pair of stainless steel tongs to Kuri. She plunged them into the rapidly cooling oil and retrieved Robbie's tiny body without a word. Steve opened the cupboard above the sink and grabbed a large serving dish with a garish hand-drawn original of Sonichu's face on its surface and a CWC signature. Three tiny stubprints surrounded it in pink, purple, and yellow, along with Rosechu's loopy signature and Sonichu's name spelled out in crude lightning bolts.

_A family plate for family meals,_ he thought._ Perfect._

Kuri placed the lifeless, crispy brown Sonee on the serving dish and began soaking up the excess grease with a paper towel. Robbie's little harelip mouth hung open in a perpetual, silent scream, and when she turned him over to dry his underside, a gush of steaming oil poured out of his scorched throat and pooled on the plate.

"End of the line," murmured Steve, and closed his eye. "That was for you, Zo. All for you."

"Arceus…we did it!" Kuri lunged forward and gave her squadmate the biggest, warmest, and most sincere hug the Manajerk had ever seen her give anyone. "You realize what we just did?"

"Fuck and yes. We're never going to top that, are we?"

Kuri shook her head.

"Good. Now I can die happy." Steve staggered over to the dining room table and crashed down into a chair, still clutching the washcloth-sized sheet of soft bloody yellow-and-brown fuzz. Kuri brought the platter over, set it on the table, then slumped into a seat beside the Manajerk and snuggled up, resting her head on his shoulder. Both of them just sat there for a while in a sort of post-execution ecstasy, listening to the last few pops and sizzles from the deep-fried carcass of Sonichu's only son. In two days, Robbie Sonee would have turned two. But not now…not ever.

"We're gonna have to leave soon, right?" asked Kuri resignedly after a few minutes.

Steve nodded.

"And we should probably get this over to the pink blob's room for the grand finale, right?"

Steve nodded.

"And then this whole revolution's finally going to end, right? This is how it all begins?"

Steve nodded.

The Jerkop sighed happily and began carving Robbie apart with her butcher knife like the world's pudgiest, ugliest turkey. Shiny puddles of grease and seared juices began leaking out beneath his torso with each stroke of the blade, pooling beneath the little Sonee's crispy corpse. "Steve, we've got to make this _really _special. This is going to be Cera's last meal, and after all, I'm the squad chef. Give me a hand here."

Steve drew his kukri. "Kuri…it would be my absolute pleasure."

* * *

**5 minutes earlier...**

_"EEEEEEAAAGGHGGHEEEAAGHAAAAGHEEEEEEEEEAAAAIIIIIIII IIEEEEEEEEEEEAAAGGHGGHEEEAAGHAAAAGHEEEEEEEEEAAAAII IIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE!"_

"Wat's dat?" asked Cera Rosey confusedly, and waddled to the door to listen. "Wobbie?"

"Oh, don't worry, sweetie," Kevin replied, listening to the Sonee's distant, piercing shrieks with silent joy and petting the pink baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon on her soft headspikes. "That's just Steve and Kuri doing a little cooking with your brother." He sniffed the air and smiled. "See? They're making a big special dinner, just for you!"

"YAY! I wuv cooking! I'm gwad you'we hawvin fun wif meeeee!" the Rosey continued smugly, oblivious to the fact that her little brother had been screaming for her to help him for the past three quarters of an hour. The immense sugar rush from ingesting nearly three pounds of milk chocolate and shredded Rosey meat had almost worn off by now, but it didn't matter anymore. Soon, Cera would be screaming just as loudly as her siblings had screamed…if not louder.

Back in December, after a rather intense session of negotiating with his squadmates, Kevin had been granted full permission to design and carry out the entirety of Cera's execution. His long, dangerous hours of studying the way she behaved around her siblings had given him a clear idea of what sort of trauma would most strongly affect her. This would not be a simple death, nor a particularly complicated one. But by Arceus, he was going to make sure she _suffered_.

No one would have guessed it, but Cera Rosey, to Kevin, was nothing less than the most utterly loathsome of the Sonichu children. Whereas Christine's excruciating narcissism and Robbie's smug, conceited, sickeningly entitled attitude usually drew more hatred from the general public, the Jerkop's time among the Sonichu family had shed new light on the despicable truth hidden behind the pink Rosey's all-too-common "forgotten child" or "mini-Rosechu" stereotypes.

Being a parasitic species by nature, the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon had been designed to take advantage of other organisms by any means necessary. At birth, their "cutesy" characteristics like the Rosey's wink and the Sonee's natural tripping were meant to adore potential hosts into providing them with food, care, protection, or anything else a baby chu needed to survive. But in the case of a sheltered homebred like Cera, who had grown up with two younger siblings to take care of, this parasitic tendency manifested in a slightly different way. Like any Sonee or Rosey, her number one priority was herself, and only herself. And being the oldest of the children had taught her many lessons in how to exploit her siblings and those around her for her own benefit.

By no definition was Cera fit to take care of herself or her younger brother and sister, yet she continuously played up the "difficulty" of her various "responsibilities", whining to Sonichu and Rosechu that caring for Robbie and Christine was such a hard, difficult task, and making herself all the more likely to receive greater amounts of praise or presents from her parents. Rosechu in particular loved to shower Cera with rewards for being such a responsible and selfless Rosey. The reality of the situation was that in bestowing so many rewards on their daughter for literally doing _nothing_, Sonichu and Rosechu had only served to increase her sense of entitlement to the level where Cera now believed that her wish was the world's command, and anything else could be acquired through whining to her parents or crying until someone gave her what she wanted.

And of course, she was also Rosechu's daughter through and through.

_"NOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOO! AAAAAIIIIIIIEEEEEEE! AAAIIEEEAAAAAUUGHHEEEE! AAAUUUGGGONEEEEEEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! SONEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"_

Robbie's screeches of insanity quickly snapped Kevin out of his contemplation. Turning to the blond medic, he gave her a quick nod and a wink. This had to be the final stage of the Sonee's ultimate demise, and after Cera's last meal was delivered, it was all up to him and his squadmate. And if there was one person more willing than him to avenge Matt's death, it was Jexis.

"You ready for this?" he muttered under his breath.

Jexis nodded and patted the black bag of medical supplies she'd brought along. "As I'll ever be."

"Wat awe you tawking abowt?" Cera giggled hyperactively as she waddled over and batted Kevin's leg with her armstubs. "Hee hee hee! Wet's pway a game! I wanna pway a game!"

The Jerkop forcefully poked her in the stomach, making the Rosey fall over backwards with a startled squeal. "Oh no, little Cera. Dinner first, and then we've got all sorts of games to play."

"YAY!" Cera rolled over and pushed herself up, bouncing up and down on her stumpfeet in a sugar-fueled high. "We're hawving a Chwistian Wuv Day dinnewr, an Mommee's making fwied chicken an onyun wings an downuts fow dinnewr 'cuz I'm takin care of Wobbie an Chwistine, an it's haaaaaaaawd!" She smiled arrogantly at Kevin and Jexis. "But Nannee Heathewr doesn't get a Chwistian Wuv Day dinnewr, 'cuz she's a_wesbian_, an wesbians awe bad 'cuz Auntie Angewica doesn't wike dem! An nannees awen't _speshul_ an _wesponsibwe_, wike me!"

"She's not here right now, is she?" Jexis remarked deceptively. "What a careless nanny she is!"

"Dat's wight! But Mommee an Daddee awe so wucky ta hawve _me_ takin care of da howse." Cera smirked and folded her armstubs in smug superiority. "Ima wesponsibwe Wosey, an dat's why evewywun wuvs me so much an gives me pwesents!" It was more than obvious that she expected a reward from the Jerkops for reminding them of her supreme importance in the Sonichu family.

In keeping her quiet, Kevin and Jexis had given Cera all of the special candy they'd brought, the stuffed panda doll that Al had given SUZI for Christmas, Kevin's empty Poké Ball, several shiny tools from Jexis's bag, and both of their Jerkop badges. The baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's greed truly knew no bounds, and to further hammer in her hypocrisy, she had spent much of the past hour telling the two Jerkops blood-boiling stories about all of the stressful situations she'd been in during the holidays, including a run-in with a family of "selfish Jewish folk" who hadn't given her any Christmas presents like they were supposed to.

Fortunately for the operatives, the sound of a bell ringing saved them from having to provide the greedy Rosey with yet another trinket.

"Dinner time!" Kevin leapt to his feet and grabbed up Cera, heaving the twenty-five pound baby chu off the floor with both hands. "Did somebody order a special Christian Love Day dinner? Because we've got one for a special little Rosey!"

"YAY! Dat's me! I'm speshul! Ima speshul Wosey, an I get a speshul dinnewr! YAY!" squealed Cera, and wrapped her stubby limbs around the Jerkop's arm, snuggling in and cooing happily while Kevin and Jexis gathered up their supplies and stolen possessions and headed out the door. Sugarplum Fury scampered after them, licking her chops in anticipation of the slaughter to come. At long last, the fourth and final kill was ready to begin. Their time had finally come.

The kitchen/dining room was empty by the time the two Jerkops reached the top of the stairs. Al, Steve, Kuri, Allie, Nate, Serge, SUZI, and Heather had all gathered in the Battle Bus, partially so that they would have a good view of the tortures to come, but mostly because they had no idea as to just how safe the outcome of Jexis and Kevin's plan was. If something went wrong with the experiment, Al had warmed up the bus's engine and was ready to retreat at a moment's notice.

On the table sat a large platter with what looked like an entire pork roast set in the middle, deep fried to perfection and nestled on a bed of potato chips and sour cream with what looked like a heavy helping of bacon bits sprinkled on top. The phrase "heart attack on a plate" came to mind. Really, it was amazing that Kuri and Steve had managed to turn Robbie Sonee's crispy carcass into something resembling a gourmet meal. Incredibly fatty and unhealthy, but still gourmet.

"YAY!" Cera shrieked gleefully as Kevin placed her on the table in front of her fried brother. Waddling around the platter, she stared hungrily at the steaming blob of meat and sniffed the air to take in the delicious smells wafting from the dead Sonee. "Dat smewls tasteeeeeeeeee!"

"It tastes even better, sweetie!" Jexis quickly fastened a little flowery Rosey-sized bib around Cera's flabby neck and patted her on the head. "Go ahead and start! Mommy and Christine and Robbie are all gonna be here in a minute or so, and they said you could start dinner without-"

Even if Cera had been listening to the Jerkop, it wouldn't have mattered. By the time Jexis had started listing off her now deceased family members, she had already hurled herself at the platter of food, ravenously munching her way through the pile of potato chips to reach the fried Sonee corpse at the center. In seconds, the Rosey's face and armstubs had disappeared into a thick glob of white cream and bacon bits, and it wasn't long before the only part of her that wasn't covered in food was the part protected by her bib. Kevin forced himself to watch the disgusting display of gluttony, if only to make the subsequent torture that much more satisfying.

In preparation for the final dinner of Cera Rosey, Steve and Kuri had taken the liberty of spiral-cutting Robbie's body to make it easier for her to tear off pieces of meat with her all but useless armstubs. As soon as she'd cleared a path through the cream and chips, the greedy Rosey flung herself at the fried Sonee without hesitation, not even pausing once to consider that this greasy blob of meat tasted nothing at all like chicken. If she had just stopped for one second and really taken the time to look at what she was eating, the whole façade might have come crashing down. But to the baby chu, food was food, and she wasn't about to let such a yummy meal go to waste.

Unnoticed by the fuzzy pink blob, Jexis reached for her black bag, unclipped it from her belt, and placed it down on the table between her and her squadmate. Inside lay the instruments of Cera's demise – a frightening assortment of syringes, forceps, scalpels, a dental drill, and several tiny bottles of liquid. Kevin didn't know what half of the equipment was for, but he was more than certain that all of it would deal some serious damage to the naïve, weak little Rosey.

Meanwhile, Cera had devoured about half of Robbie's fried body, ripping off great hunks of tender crispy flesh with her armstubs and devouring more and more of the fatty Sonee with every gleeful bite from her little toothless mouth. Her face was caked in oil, sour cream, and scraps of meat, yet still she persisted on eating her way through the delicious meal, never stopping even once to wipe her mouth or take a breather. Kevin found it ironic that the only times that the baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon ever showed some sort of energy or enthusiasm was when there was some sort of food or reward involved. Otherwise, they couldn't be bothered to complete even the simplest of tasks without excessively whining or complaining about so much hard work.

"Hey Cera," Kevin addressed the Rosey as she delightedly pulled a massive chunk of meat right off of Robbie's skull to expose the two shriveled, jelly-like orbs that had once been her brother's eyes. "How do you like that special dinner that Mommy made for you?"

Cera let out a short stress-sigh and glanced over her shoulder. It was more than obvious that she didn't like being interrupted in the middle of such a monumentally important task. "It's tastee! Weave me awone! I wike dis fwied chicken!" Raising the crunchy face meat to her mouth, she fastened her toothless gums around it and ripped off a chewy piece of cartilage that had once been Robbie's tiny black nose. She sighed again and spat out the indigestible blob, then set about devouring the rest of what had once been her brother's forever-screaming face.

"And why did Mommy make you such a tasty Christian Love Day dinner?" asked the Jerkop, surreptitiously accepting a syringe from Jexis as she passed it over to him.

The Rosey turned around and stared at Kevin, fixing him with a frighteningly creepy stare that so many innocent men, women, and children had gazed upon in the three horrific years of her life.

"'Cuz ima _wesponsibwe_ Wosey, swow-in-da-mind!" she stated slowly, emphasizing each word just like her parents had taught her to do around slow-in-the-minds and other humans of less intelligence than her. And since Mommy was always telling her about how she was such a smart and clever and responsible Rosey, that category had been taken up with pretty much every single human that Cera had ever come into contact with…excluding Grandpa Chris, of course.

"Very smart, Cera!" Kevin replied. He placed the syringe on the table. "Are you thirsty?"

"Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeesssssssssssssssssssssss," Cera sighed, rolling her eyes as if to say _Of course I am, you stupid jerk! You should know that by now!_ She stared at the syringe. "Wat's dat?"

"Oh, just a special baby bottle full of some nice delicious CWC Orange Soda!" explained Jexis coolly. "Come over here and have some! It's really, really good!"

"YAY!" The Rosey waddled over to Kevin, greedily licking her greasy, messy face and armstubs to get at the delicious globs of meat and sour cream that were still stuck to her. "I'm thiwstee an I wuv CWC Owange Sowda! Mommee awways dwinks Owange Sowda befowe she pways wif Daddee in da bedwoom! I wanna pway in da bedwoom aftewr dinnewr, wike Mommee!"

"Sure thing!" Kevin raised the syringe carefully, making sure not to disturb its contents too much in the process. "And after this, Christine and Robbie are gonna play with you too!"

Cera's pudgy, impudent face curled into a huge smile. "YAY! Tank you so much! I wuv you!"

"That's right. You're a good little baby…" murmured the Jerkop as he pushed the needle past Cera's harelips and into the roof of her little mouth. "I wuv you too, Cera. I wuv you too."

"Wat awe you do-AAAAAAAAHHHHHHUUUAAAAAAAAAAHHHGUUGHGGUHGH!" screamed the Rosey as she felt the piercing prick in the back of her throat and the horrid metallic taste of blood. Struggling and heaving, she could only flail around and gurgle while the needle plunged further and further back, up through the thick layers of fat that surrounded her stunted brain until its sharp tip pierced her hypothalamus and injected its incredibly unstable payload. Instantly, her body began erratically spasming, though her piteous shrieks continued on.

Kevin placed the struggling, squirming baby chu on the table and backed away as a thick gush of orange foam began to spew from Cera's mouth. The Rosey screamed and thrashed, her vapid green eyes bulging with a terror beyond any terror she had experienced in her pathetic existence. The Orange Soda was in her brain, invading her mind, sizzling and dissolving and replicating and burning away. Still more of the sweet orange sludge splattered on the floor as Cera vomited up more and more of the self-replicating bioweapon, choking and heaving in blazing acidic agony. It was eating its way through her with every passing second – attacking every single inch of her chubby little body with its unknown and unpredictable chemicals.

"WUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHH! GUUUUUGGUHUGGH! _GUUUUUGGUHUGGH!_"

"Holy _shit_," breathed Kevin as he and Jexis retreated a few steps back. "What happens now?"

"Now?" A bitter smile spread across the medic's face. "Let's go practice medicine."

"HUUUURRRRRGGGGHHHHH!" Cera gurgled, falling forward onto the table as slimy drops of orange transparent goo continued to burst from her throat like large blobs of Jell-O. Kicking her tiny stumpfeet and flailing her stubby arms, she continued to lurch around while her body fought to purge itself of the Orange Soda. With her inherent healing factor, the mutagen could not dissolve her from the inside fast enough to kill her or even deal significant damage to any of her internal organs. The Rosey could only lie there, alone and abandoned, flopping around like a dying fish and gurgling feeble cries as her insides burned. The two Jerkops ignored her and began laying out a series of scalpels, tweezers, and other surgical tools on the table. There was no need for them to confiscate any of her clothes – even Chris himself wouldn't be able to deny the sheer amount of proof the Honey Badgers were leaving behind for Sonichu to discover.

At long last, the strenuous vomiting stopped, and Cera collapsed in a pile of food-smeared fuzz, quivering and exhausted from the sheer exertion of the purge. Her plump body shivered and her pink pelt dripped with icy sweat as waves of throbbing, pounding pain lanced through her again and again. Something in the Orange Soda had completely neutralized her motor functions from the neck down, turning her into a limp little puppet of flesh, fur, screams, and constant pain.

And unfortunately for her, "playtime" for the Jerkops was just beginning.

"Assimilation of CWC Orange Soda bioweapon, stage one," Jexis announced coldly, placing a small digital recording device on the table as she and Kevin each pulled on a pair of thick rubber gloves and plastic goggles that the blond Jerkop had brought along in her medical kit. "Direct injection into the hypothalamus resulted in a complete failure of all motor skills, but…" She pressed a finger to Cera's chest, feeling the Rosey's tiny heart pounding in terror. "Involuntary functions are still working. The chemical seems to be working its way through her nervous system. Some of it must've trickled down her throat and settled into her stomach, hence the vomiting." Grinning, the medic grabbed one of Cera's armstubs with a pair of forceps and accepted a scalpel from Kevin. "Responsiveness and pain tests commencing immediately."

"NNNNNNNRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

_Shick!_ The razor-sharp point of Jexis's scalpel pierced the bare skin of the Rosey's limp armstub, and a fat bead of blood erupted from the wound. Cera's hoarse shrieks rang through the kitchen. With no way to lose consciousness, no anesthetic, no painkillers, and no means of escape, all she could do was to lie there and scream again and again, her eyes bulging in unspeakable agony.

"Responsiveness…normal," chuckled Jexis. "Pain reaction…exceptional." She slid the blade out of Cera's skin, dangled it back and forth in front of the frightened Rosey's eyes, then plunged it right into the very tip of her other armstub – the most sensitive area of any baby chu's limbs.

"EEEEEEEAAAAAAAAGGGGGHHHHHHHAAAAAAAIIIIIIEEEEEIIII IAAAAAHHHH!" Cera screeched and wailed desperately, but even her most piercing cries couldn't stop the scalpel from slicing through her fatty limb and nearly bisecting it. A stream of highly pressurized blood squirted a full foot across the table and onto the greasy remains of Robbie, where it promptly began sizzling and giving off tiny wisps of acrid black smoke. Kevin quickly drew his knife and sliced off the affected hunk of meat before the corrosive blood could eat its way past the fatty outer layer, then stared in awe as the fried meat began bubbling and churning of its own accord.

"Interesting." Jexis released her grip on the scalpel, leaving the steel blade still embedded in the screaming Rosey's armstub. She leaned in close to the recorder. "What we're seeing here is a full-scale integration of the bioweapon with the subject's bloodstream. The regenerative property of her DNA has completely absorbed it, and now it's spreading through her body like a virus, or some kind of parasitic organism. In this state, the corrosive material can't destroy her like, say, a normal baby chu, so we're going to be able to see what happens as it mixes with her DNA."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Oh, be quiet." The medic grabbed the scalpel and twisted it sharply, prompting another squirt of acidic blood from Cera's mutilated armstub. "How do you like that, little Rosey? Hurts, right?"

"WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! STAWP IT! STAWWWP IIIIITTTTT!" the Rosey screamed, banging her head against the table in a frenzied attempt to stop the burning sensations inside of her. Every bit of her was hurting, but the deep, grievous cuts on her armstubs blazed and throbbed with a pain so immense that she thought for sure she had to be inside a nightmare. Squeezing her eyes shut as a fresh wave of tears poured into her already soaking fur, she tried to picture Sonichu and Rosechu racing to save her, battling entire armies of jerks and trolls so they could rescue their beloved little daughter from all of the horrible pain and stress she was in.

"Cera," Kevin addressed her calmly, relishing every last millisecond of the Rosey's shrieks and agonized bawling. "Do you know what happened to Christine and Robbie and Mommy?" He gently removed the scalpel from her stub and patted her on the head. Instantly, the baby chu's eyes snapped open. The ever-present pain already seemed to be fading away, leaving only an acidic burning sensation in her belly. "Do you want to know why your dinner tasted so good?"

"'Cuz Mommee made it fow ME!" shrieked Cera defiantly. Why was Kevin asking her all of these dumb stupid jerk questions? Why wasn't he doing everything in his power to make all the Prickly-Wicklies go away and giving her presents to make her feel better? She deserved at least ten bags of Cera Candy and a pony after enduring so much pain and stress!

"No." The Jerkop gazed into her frightened eyes, shaking his head and smiling condescendingly. Snatching the little Rosey up in a gloved hand, he reached for Robbie's carcass with the other and flipped it over so Cera could see exactly what she'd been so gleefully devouring all this time. "See? It was Robbie. We killed your brother, Cera. We killed him, and you gobbled him up like the greedy little pig you are. You could've stopped, you know. But _no_. You _deserved_ your food."

If Kevin had been expecting shock, sadness, disgust, or any sort of sympathetic reaction from the Rosey at this moment of realization, he was about to be proven very, very wrong.

Sighing, Cera rolled her head around and stared back up at the Jerkop. "No, dat wasn't da WEAL Wobbie Sonee. Dat was just sum stoopid twoll twick! Mommee an Daddee an Nannee Heathewr awe awways here ta pwotect us from da twolls an jewks an homows!" She sniffled and glared at Kevin angrily. "I'm tewwing Mommee you didn't take care of me! WET ME GO, YOU JEW!"

"You don't get it, do you?" snarled Kevin, unable to believe that Cera had somehow found some insane way of denying the truth before her very eyes. "We killed your brother. We killed your sister. And we killed your mother. WE KILLED YOUR FUCKING _MOTHER_, CERA."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" shrieked Cera, and began furiously kicking her stumpfeet back and forth in the air. As the Orange Soda settled into her body, she was slowly regaining control of her movements. "PUT ME DOWN, YOU WYING TWOLL! I WANT MY MOMMEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"SHUT UP!" Kevin slapped her across the face with the back of his hand, prompting a massive earsplitting scream from the tormented Rosey. "WE KILLED YOUR ENTIRE FUCKING FAMILY, YOU SPOILED LITTLE SHIT! AND YOU'RE NEXT, CERA ROSEY! YOU'RE NEXT! NOT EVEN DADDY'S GONNA BE ABLE TO SAVE YOU WHEN WE'RE DONE!"

"YAY!" Cera's pained face twisted into a self-assured smile. "Daddee's gonna sayve me!" She struggled and squirmed, stress-sighing as Kevin's gloved fingers tightened around her fat little torso in frustration and rage. She didn't care that the stupid jerk had just told her that her mother and siblings were dead. He was obviously lying, because nothing bad could _ever_ happen to her family as long as Sonichu and Grandpa Chris were there to protect them!

And even if Mommy and Christine and Robbie were gone, she still had Daddy to tell her she was such a good, well-behaved Rosey. When Sonichu came back, he'd be sure to give her lots of hugs and kisses and candy and ponies and whatever she needed to make the stress and Prickly-Wicklies go away! Without her siblings, it was even better! She wouldn't need to go through all the stress of sharing any of Sonichu's gifts with Christine or Robbie to make her parents give her even more presents for being responsible and generous! She could keep them all for herself, because she was such a good little Rosey and deserved nothing less than whatever she wanted, whenever she wanted it, from whoever she wanted it from, wherever it was, for whatever reason.

Kevin drew her in close to his face and gave her his most vicious grin. "But Daddy's not here right now, is he, little Cera?" He looked around dramatically and shrugged. "Nope! Not here! And you know what that means?"

"Dat means…" The Rosey's infuriating smile grew wider and wider. Her imagination was spiraling out of control, toward a scenario of utter perfection. Kevin's question was entirely forgotten, whisked away as the pain and darkness gave way to a bright, wonderful future…

"YAAAAAAAAY!" she squealed happily, all horror and sorrow forgotten. "I'm da onwee wun weft! I'm gonna wead da next Cay-o-tic Combow now, not Wobbie! I'm gonna be da Qween of da Ewectwic Hedgehawg Pokeemawn, an Gwampa Chwis an Daddee an I awe gonna make awl da twolls pay fow dere cwimes and destwoy awl da homows an WULE DA WOWLD! YAY!"

Kevin froze. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a trio of shrill twee voices chanted their hateful speech, piercing the shadows of his dreams and nightmares to become reality again.

_"DEATH TA AWL WIFE! WE AWE DA DESTWUCSHUN OF AWL WIVING TINGS! EXISTENCE ITSEWF WIWL BE DEVOWERD, FOW WE AWE DA AWPHACHU AN OMWEGAC-"_

"NO! GET THE FUCK OUT OF MY HEAD!" screamed Kevin, stumbling backwards as the horrendous nightmare flashed through his mind. Again and again, the stomach-churning images pierced his mind – humans enslaved by Sonichus and Rosechus, swarms of larvae devouring all in their path, Chandler's bloated corpse atop a throne of Legos…

But as he watched in terror, the scene shifted. Instead of three bloody fuzzy blobs emerging from the massive flesh-puppet's body, there was now only one. A single, pink Rosey. Cera Rosey.

_"Kevin?"_

Kevin snapped back to reality, and the vision faded almost as quickly as it had appeared. He was breathing heavily, his eyes fixed upon Cera's as pure, bitter hatred burned within his heart like a lump of molten magma. To keep the nightmare world of a chu-dominated earth from becoming a reality, the job had to be finished. The Sonichu children and the legacy of their parents had to be wiped off the face of the earth if the human race was to survive.

"Kevin?" repeated Jexis, looking at him confusedly. "You okay? Did you inhale any fumes or-"

"No, I'm okay." Kevin shook his head and leaned in close to Cera's face. "I'm _more_ than okay."

Waves of panic surged through the terrified little Rosey. Where was Daddy? Why wasn't he coming to save her from the trolls and give her presents like he always did in stressful situations?

"Daddee's…uh…Daddee's got a _pwan!_" she insisted, and her fear dissipated like steam in the air. "He's gonna go get Gwampa Chwis an da_whowle _Cay-o-tic Combow and come wescue me 'cuz he wuvs me! An den Gwampa Chwis is gonna bwing Mommee back ta wife!" Having never learned about the finality of death before, Cera had never really considered it that important, especially in contrast to the many trials, tribulations, and loads of stress and hard work that she had to endure on a daily basis. "Mommee an Daddee awe a Twoo Wuv Coupwe, an Twoo Wuv Coupwes _awways_ end up wiving happiwee evewr aftewr, wike faiwee tale pwincesses!"

"Kevin, give her to me." Jexis shook her head in bewilderment and reached for the Rosey. "Time to play a little game. You want to play a game, Cera? It's fun!"

"NO!" Cera yelled, and tried to wiggle out of Jexis's grip as Kevin handed her over. "I WANNA PONEE AN I WANT CEWAH CANDEE AN I WANNA WATCH MEWWY POPPINS AN GO SHAWPPING WIF MOMMEE! I WANT MY MOMMEE, YOU STOOPID TWOLLS! WAAAAAAHHHHHH! WAAAAAAHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHH!"

Ignoring the spoiled Rosey's cries and shrieks, Jexis snatched up her medical bag and strode out of the kitchen while Kevin picked up Sugar and placed her on the table beside the fried remains of Robbie's carcass to see if she wanted any for herself. The honey badger sniffed at the ugly lump of greasy meat, shuddered in revulsion, then turned around and promptly urinated on the dead Sonee to mark her territory. Not even _she_ wanted to eat it. Smiling, Kevin waited until she was done defiling Robbie's corpse, then helped her down to the floor where SUZI was still riding around in the Sonee's little yellow go-kart. Sugar darted off after the giggling LIESA unit, excited for a game of tag with her playful robotic friend.

"Clear!" he announced, turning to the Battle Bus as the other Honey Badgers filed back out into the kitchen of 14 Brunchville Lane. "Al, Steve, we can start the cleanup now. I'll be with Jexis."

"Got it." The Legend nodded to Steve as he flipped down his welder's mask and headed for the garage. "Start with Christine's room. Everything salvageable goes into the Battle Bus. Anything else…burn it or break it. Remember, _nothing_ gets left behind."

"Will do," replied the Manajerk. "Kuri, Allie, you're with me! Nate and Serge, go with Al!"

"No! I'm going with Kevin," Allie insisted. "I want to see her die. I _need_ to see it."

"We're taping everything, remember?" Kevin grabbed her hand and squeezed it gently. "Don't worry, Allie. Please, just go and help them burn this whole fucking place d-"

"Perdone, Señor Morrison," Heather Iglesias interjected, and stepped out of the bus, shaking with excitement. "The parásitos stole so much from our city…I can help you sort out what they took and who they took it from! When they forced some family to give up their toys and food to…to their little bichos of children, I wrote down as much as I could! Here!" She reached into the pocket of her jeans and withdrew a small lined notebook, then passed it to Steve.

"Very good, Miss Iglesias." The blond Jerkop grinned as he flipped through the catalogue of greed and misery. "Allie, give her Trogdor and go with Kevin. You've both earned that much."

"Damn right!" Allie shrugged off the massive flamethrower and helped strap it onto the former nanny, smiling kindly as she pointed out the various controls to Heather. "Just aim the mouth at whatever you want to burn and squeeze the fire trigger. This one." She pointed to the first of the weapon's two triggers. "Not the second one, whatever you do. That's…uh…dangerous."

"Si, señorita!" answered Heather eagerly, and whirled toward Robbie's oily, befouled corpse.

Before anyone could react, the Latina woman had squeezed the trigger and blasted the dead Sonee with a concentrated stream of burning fuel at the **EXTRA CRISPY** setting, engulfing what was left of Robbie in an inferno of crackling flames and greasy black smoke. Kevin, Allie, Kuri and Steve could only watch in satisfied awe as the fat little chu's fried body burst into flames and began to disintegrate and fall apart. By the time Heather was done, only a shrunken black carcass and a few bubbling lumps of yellow adipose tissue remained on the platter.

"THAT'S WHAT YOU GET, YOU FILTHY LITTLE FÁBRICA DE MIERDA!" she screamed, hurling her Nanny Program badge into the blackened, smoking remnants of Robbie Sonee. Still not satisfied by her utter desecration of the baby chu's body, she snatched a handful of paper towels from a roll on the wall and used it as a makeshift glove to grab the dead Sonee by his ribcage and hurl it into a picture of the Sonichu family, where it promptly exploded and burst apart in a shower of blackened bones, shriveled organs, gelatinous blood, and globs of fat. Yelling a furious tirade of Spanish curses, she dashed over and brought her foot down on the burnt, shattered mess, crunching and stomping what was left of the little fuzzball into a black, brown, and red splatter on the kitchen floor. A final burst from Trogdor engulfed the remaining organic material, eliminating the chance that any of Robbie Sonee's DNA could be recovered.

"Arceus," Allie exhaled in amazement. "Nicely done, Miss Iglesias. Muy bien!"

"Muy bien!" laughed Heather, and saluted the Jerkop. "Gracias, Senorita Parker!"

"All right, let's go." Kevin tugged at Allie's arm as the nanny, Steve, and Kuri headed down the stairs. "Come on, we need to get back to Cera before Jexis does anyth-mmmmfffff!" He found himself suddenly unable to continue through the fierce kiss that his squadmate had just drawn him into without warning. For a moment, there was only her. Eventually, though, the prospect of sending the last of Sonichu and Rosechu's children to a fate worse than death beat anything else.

"We're gonna end this," Allie snarled as they drew apart. "All three of us. Together. For Matt."

"For Matt," repeated Kevin as he took her hand and led her out of the kitchen, toward the unholy bastion of darkness and horror that was Sonichu and Rosechu's bedroom.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!" Cera screamed, struggling and kicking helplessly while Jexis pushed a large dissection pin through each of her stubby limbs and hammered them down into a large hardcover copy of the _Sonichu_ comic that Chandler had given to Sonichu and Rosechu for the lovehogs' tenth anniversary. The book was just big enough to accommodate the tiny Rosey, and thick enough so that she couldn't pull her impaled armstubs or stumpfeet free of the pages. She lay there, bleeding and shrieking, helpless before the cruel methodical fury of the teenage Jerkop medic.

"Your father murdered my boyfriend," Jexis hissed, spinning the book around and around on the wooden computer desk and making the Rosey scream even louder in terror. "Your father killed him after Matt saved my life. And now I get to kill his precious baby and leave him alive." She let out a chilling laugh and reached for her dental drill. "What goes around comes around."

"You didn't open her up yet, did you?" Kevin pushed the door open and stepped inside, ushering Allie forward into the bedroom. "I want to see her suffer. I want to hear her _scream_."

"Just in time." The young medic straightened up and waved to her squadmates. "Come on over. Don't stand too close, though. Her blood's about to reach the limit, and I want to get this done before the mutagens start going to work."

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH! STAWP IT! STAWP IT AN WET ME GO!" bawled the struggling pink Rosey as Kevin and Allie sat down beside Jexis to watch. "WAT AWE YOU DOING? STAWP IT! STAAAAWWWWP IIIIIITTTT! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Hold still. Good girl!" Grabbing Cera's head between finger and thumb, the Jerkop activated the drill and held it next to the baby chu's ear. "You hear that, Cera? That's the sound of pain." Chuckling cruelly as her fuzzy victim writhed and wailed in helpless fear, she plunged the bit into the soft flaps of skin directly under the Rosey's lower jaw, driving it up through her chin.

"NNNNNNNNNRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH H!" A gush of tangy, orange-flavored blood squirted into Cera's mouth, gushing forth from the piercing pain beneath her little tongue. And still Jexis persisted, pushing further and further up while the whirling drill bit shredded the Rosey's tongue into a bloody mess. Blood began dribbling from the corners of her mouth and the horrific wound beneath her chin, and her muffled screams soon turned to little more than desperate gurgles of misery. Why were the big mean jerks giving her so many Prickly-Wicklies? She wanted presents and care, not stress! They weren't giving her what she wanted, because they were trolls! Well, her father would take care of them once he got back!

At long last, the biting steel withdrew from her mouth, but it was far too late for the Rosey now. Her tongue and gums had been mangled beyond repair in what had to be the single greatest example of dental malpractice in the history of CWCville. And Cera didn't even have any teeth.

"WUUUUUUUHHHHGHGGGHHHHHH!" she bawled, coughing and spitting out the bloody remnants of her tongue onto her little blue shirt. There wasn't much left except a few meager scraps of meat. She'd swallowed the rest of it, along with about half a cup of her own blood.

"And you didn't even have to open her mouth," Allie commented, smiling as she passed Jexis a Zippo lighter. "Here. She's probably gonna bleed out if you don't cauterize the-"

"No need. Check this out." Grabbing a pair of forceps in each hand, Jexis clamped them down on both the left and right flaps of Cera's harelips and pulled back hard to reveal the inner part of the baby chu's mouth. The Rosey shrieked in pain and opened her mouth, but the medic quickly fastened a third pair of forceps onto her lower jaw and pulled it open. The ragged stump that had once been Cera's tongue had completely healed over, and was no longer oozing blood. Whatever the CWC Orange Soda was doing to her bloodstream, it had accelerated her own healing factor.

Unfortunately for her, these new DNA enhancements did _nothing_ to lessen the pain.

"GUGHUGHUGHUGHGUHGUHGUGUHGUGHUGH!" gurgled Cera, thrashing around in an attempt to somehow dislodge the cold metal from her harelips and jaws. "GUUUHGUHUGUHGUHGUGHGUGHUGHGUHUGHGUHGUGGUGH!"

"Care to do the honors?" Jexis asked as she passed a pair of surgical scissors to Kevin.

"I got this." The Jerkop grinned as he reached over and grasped the upper two forceps. "Does this mean that she can heal _anything_ now?"

"As far as I know, it only seals up cuts and wounds," answered the medic. "I think that would-"

_RRRRRRRIIIIIPPPPP!_

"EEEEEEHHHHHHHUUUUUUGHGHUGHUGHHEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHH! " screeched Cera as Kevin jerked upward with both pairs of forceps, tearing her harelips and her little black dot of a nose free of her face in a shower of blood. Dropping the severed flaps of skin onto the desk, the Jerkop observed his shrieking victim with sadistic glee, while Allie and Jexis looked on in amazement and disgust. Cera's face had been utterly mutilated beyond comparison, her mouth stripped down to little more than pale bone, weak muscle, and a layer of fat. The exposed organs that lay beneath her cheekspots hung by mere strips of skin, while blood oozed and dripped from her mouth and skinned face. Sure enough, though, within a matter of seconds, the torn vessels and arteries let off little puffs of white steam and sealed shut, effectively preventing the Rosey from bleeding to death while at the same time preserving her truly mind-boggling levels of pain.

"That," Allie whispered in awe as Cera continued screaming and gurgling on her own blood, "is fucking incredible. What the hell did you do to her?"

Jexis smiled. "Just a little bit of Grandpa Chris's greatest creation _ever_."

"My turn! My turn!" Hurriedly pulling on a pair of her own fireproof gloves, the Jerkop seized a scalpel and drove it into Cera's plump belly, then slit it open to reveal a mass of orange-tinted, squirming intestines. "Oh, ARCEUS! FUCK! WHAT THE FUCK'S WRONG WITH HER?!"

"WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH!" Nearly hysterical with burning agony and horror, the Rosey shuddered and cried as she felt the sharp blades and steel forceps enter her torso. Kevin quickly reached in and snapped off Cera's ribs one by one, exposing a violently pulsating orange heart and a pair of massive tumorous lungs that had nearly embedded themselves in her ribcage. Each crack yielded another shrill squeal of pain from the suffering baby chu, until the thin, bloody white bones at last lay in a little pile on the desk next to the makeshift dissection board. Cera's innards throbbed and spasmed of their own accord, as if a thousand tiny worms had hatched inside each organ and were fighting to be free of their disgusting little host. "WUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHUUUUUUUHHHHHHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH HHHH!"

"Stage two," Jexis gasped in awe, her eyes firmly fixed upon the Rosey's writhing entrails. "The body's DNA assimilates the bioweapon, which…" She drew in a deep breath and continued. "…which means that once it takes over, it's going to start using her body as a springboard."

"For what?" Kevin asked, though he had a feeling he didn't want to know.

"Oh God. We didn't take natural progression into account." Jexis drew away from the spasming Rosey as Cera's piercing screams rang through the bedroom. "Pack it up! Get everything out of here! This thing's gonna keep replicating until…"

"EEEEEEEEUUUUUUUUUUAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHGGGEEEEEEEE EEEHHHH!" screeched Cera as the skin of her armstubs peeled free of the dissection pin and reformed itself. "WAAAHHHHHHAHHAHHAAAAAHHHH! EEEEEEEEIIIIIIIIEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHH HHH!"

Wordlessly, Kevin, Allie, and Jexis gathered the untainted surgical tools together and backed away from the desk, just as the agonized Rosey managed to tear her feet loose and flopped down on the polished wooden surface, trailing her own innards as she continued to shriek and wail her deafening cries of shock and immense pain. The pulsing orange coils of intestine curled back into her belly, while the split flaps of skin reformed and sealed shut. Even though Cera's injuries had been healed, her screams continued to grow even louder and louder. The Orange Soda was consuming her, merging with her, fighting her stubborn regenerative abilities in its struggle to assimilate the tiny shrieking baby chu.

"How much more time do you think she has until things start getting _really_ bad?" Allie asked under her breath as Kevin opened the bedroom door. "I mean, until it starts mutating her more?"

"I don't know," replied Jexis. "Five, ten minutes?"

"That'll work. Everyone out!" Kevin held the door for his squadmates, then hurried out to safety while Cera continued screaming and writhing on the desk. As Allie and Jexis turned toward Robbie's room to assist Nate with confiscating the dead Sonee's possessions, he slowly drew the door shut, then paused just before the Rosey disappeared from sight behind the door.

_No. Not like this. Not after Matt._

Pushing the door open again, he stepped inside and slowly walked towards Cera. As the Rosey's cries of pain escalated into insanity, Kevin reached for the sheath on his belt and felt his fingers curl around the handle of George's hunting knife, almost automatically. He had waited two months for this moment, two months of enduring the greedy, selfish, entitled baby chu's endless whining for candy and presents, her disgusting justifications for her own actions at the expense of those around her, the way she used her spoiled, despicable siblings as tools to acquire even more praise and rewards from her horrible parents…two months of torture, two months in hell.

_No more,_ he thought as he snatched a single Post-It Note and a pen from a stack beside Sonichu and Rosechu's computer. Rosechu was dead. Christine was dead. Robbie was dead. And very soon, the last of the original Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's brood would be in hell with them.

Kevin scribbled calmly, dotting each I and crossing each T with bitter satisfaction as he penned the note he'd been wanting to deliver to Sonichu since the fateful day of Chandler's return. Matt had died so needlessly, taken from his squadmates by a twist of fate. Had anyone confronted the Mayor himself about what he thought of such a tragedy, there was no doubt that Chandler would have simply brushed off any accusation of murder toward his beloved creation, followed by an insincere apology and a suggestion for Matt's friends and family to move on and forgive.

There was no reason why Kevin couldn't say the same about Sonichu's slain wife and children.

"You ever learn about karma, Cera?" he muttered in satisfaction, picking up the Post-It Note.

"Wuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhh…" sobbed the Rosey. Her screams had died down, either from sheer fatigue or simply because the last vestiges of energy in her lungs had been expended during her surgery. "Huuuuuuhhhhhhhh…huhhhhhhh…huuuuuuwwwwwppp mweeeeeeeeeeuuuhhhh…"

"Help you?" Kevin glared at her and shook his head. "Why? Why the _fuck_ should I help you?"

Cera burst into tears again, sobbing and blubbering with desperation and pain. If she had still possessed her tongue, the Jerkop had no doubt that she would have pleaded with him to help her because he was her friend…her Jewish friend…and that Jews were always supposed to help out any Roseys in need, because GodJesus wanted them to. Even as an Arcean-Christian, Kevin was utterly sickened by Cera's willingness to fashion her own ignorant expectations of religion into even more excuses to bully innocent families into giving her more and more rewards.

It was simply what she lived for. Cera Rosey and her ilk were parasites, and nothing more.

"See, Cera…" Kevin continued as he pressed the sticky square of paper to her shuddering belly, "karma is pretty much what happens when you do something nice and get something nice in return. Only problem is…it also works the other way. If your daddy did something mean, like…" He raised the knife and dangled the pointed tip above Cera's terrified face. "…like murdering someone's best friend right in front of them…well, you know what happens to him then?"

"NUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHH!" The Rosey's eyes bulged out of their sockets as the cruel blade ascended into the air, right above her swollen stomach. What was the stupid jerk talking about? Why didn't he love her? Why was he giving her so many Prickly-Wicklies? He was her friend, and by now, he owed her an entire shopping spree at the CWCville Shopping Center, along with seven ponies and eighteen bags of candy to make up for all the stress he'd caused!

Kevin grinned and stabbed down, hard. "Collateral damage, Cera. Collateral damage."

_SQUICK! THUNK!_

"WWWWUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH H!" shrieked Cera as the massive hunting knife sheared through the paper and plunged down through her belly, embedding itself in the wooden desk as frothy orange liquid bubbled up out of the cut and began trickling down the sides of her shirt and skirt. Impaled like a giant fuzzy insect on a pin, she wriggled and writhed, screaming and screaming while spurts of thick citrus-smelling blood oozed forth from her little body. The skin on her armstubs and stumpfeet looked looser, more swollen, and now held a definite orange tint. Slowly but surely, the CWC Orange Soda was working its way through her, slowly turning her into a being composed of pure pain and misery.

Without another word, Kevin turned and walked away, leaving the last of Sonichu's children to her horrible, unspeakable fate. His work was done, and now the only task left was to make sure the aftermath of their little visit was just as heart-shattering to Chandler and his beloved creation as Operation Hedgeclipper itself would surely turn out to be.

Slowly but surely, the Jerkop pulled the door shut, sealing Cera inside to writhe and shriek until the unstable chemicals in her grandfather's legacy finally decided to show mercy and peel her apart at the molecular level. Kevin didn't know if the Orange Soda was becoming sentient or if it had simply become some sort of all-devouring organism inside the baby chu's veins and nervous system, but he had a feeling that he didn't want to find out.

And besides, the Honey Badgers still had a lot of work to do.

Alone, pathetic, and helpless against the indescribable force burning its way through her insides, Cera Rosey lay on her back and screamed again and again. There wasn't much she could do in terms of movement. The thick steel blade of Kevin's knife had plunged all the way through her fuzzy body and was now embedded deep in the surface of the desk. And somehow, through some unearthly miracle, she was still alive. The universe _obviously _wouldn't let her die, since her aunt Angelica had told her that if she was a good Rosey and remembered to thank God and Jesus for protecting her from the evils of homosexuality, nothing bad would ever happen to her.

But if she was such a good Rosey, then _why_ was she suffering? Why was she in so much pain?

"W…w…wuh…wwwuuuuuuuhhhhhhhh…" she whimpered, and raised her armstubs toward the knife protruding from her torso. The torn skin on both limbs had already healed over in streaks of orange scar tissue, no doubt due to another miraculous blessing from the GodBear. The pain was still there, building up higher and higher inside her tortured body with every passing second.

_"How much more do we have left in the garage?"_ Jexis's voice sounded from outside the door.

_"Just another few boxes."_ replied Al._ "Oh, and find Cera's go-kart, too. I swear I just had it…"_

"Kuh…kuh…kuhhh…" Cera stuttered, trembling with a mixture of pain and fury. It was _hers!_ It was _her_ go-kart, because Mommy and Daddy had given it to _her!_ She'd _earned_ it for enduring so much stress over the holidays, especially with that greedy Jew family and that fake Santa! Well, she had God and Jesus and the Bear and all the powers of her mother and father, since she was the chosen one, destined to marry a strong, handsome Sonichu and lead the next Chaotic Combo when she grew up! And since Christine was gone, _she_ was the prettiest Rosey in the world now! If her siblings _were_ actually dead, it was because they'd been stupid and selfish! Not like her!

Fueled by tard rage, the baby chu pressed her armstubs against the desk and tried to pull herself away from the knife. Piercing explosions of pain lanced through her belly, but she persisted. The jerks were stealing _her_ go-kart that _she_ so deserved to have! With a disgusting ripping noise, the sharp blade sliced through her soft, shuddering body, neatly butterflying her so that her torso and lower body were split right down the middle.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" she squealed, squeezing her eyes shut and banging her stubs against the desk as a thick gush of bubbling orange goo and a disproportionately large mass of coiled intestines slithered out of the massive wound between her frantically kicking stumpfeet. The slimy pink tubes twisted and writhed and pulsated like a nest of worms, dripping with even more of her infected blood. There was something else…something buried deep inside her guts, a massive, excruciating bulge that emerged from her stomach and began pushing and wriggling its way down through the knotted maze of exposed innards.

_SQUICK! SQUISH!_

The bulge shuddered and writhed, swelling up until it had reached the size of an orange. Her guts were stretched to the breaking point, and it felt like they were going to rupture any second now…

_RRRRRRRIIIIPPPPP! SQUISH! SQUICK! SPLAT!_

"SEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" screeched Cera, automatically reverting to her ingrained Pokémon characteristics as the pain in her torso skyrocketed tenfold. "WOSEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!"

Through her own piercing screams and the pounding of blood in her ears, the agonized Rosey could barely make out another, frighteningly familiar sound…a sound she knew all too well.

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!"

"Wuh…Wuh…" she choked through her tears, fighting to keep her eyes open as the gelatinous orange liquid dribbled from her nose and mouth. "Wob…Wobbie? WOBBIE! WOBBIEEEEE!"

The pain lessened, and Cera flopped over onto her belly. Clenching her gums together, she drew a tortured breath and feverishly crawled around in a circle. Her exposed intestines were pulling themselves back inside her split body, the knife wound was already knitting itself together, and even her severed, shredded little tongue had reformed itself. It still hurt more than any kind of hurt she'd ever known, but she knew that in the end, she would survive. As long as she could outlast the horrible tortures that the Jerkops had heaped upon her, Daddy and Grandpa Chris would always love her and take care of her. She was a special Rosey, the specialist Rosey in the world, and she was _going_ to grow up and marry a Sonichu one day!

Filled with fresh determination, she opened her teary eyes to see a quivering ball of yellow fluff curled up on the desk in front of her and squealing in terror. As she watched, utterly stupefied, the fuzzy lump twitched and rolled over, exposing its identity to Cera at last.

It was a Sonee. A tiny, soaking, four inch tall baby Sonee, barely out of its embryonic stage.

Apart from the gooey cocoon of CWC Orange Soda dripping out of its fur, it looked just like her brother Robbie had looked two years ago, when she and Christine and Sonichu and Rosechu had all gathered around the big incubator crib to watch their new baby weakly try and kick his way out of his egg. The effort was simply too great for the unborn Sonee, and eventually, Sonichu had simply picked up the egg and cracked it against the side of the dining room table, spilling the screaming little chu and a thick gush of amniotic fluid out onto the surface. But the thing that now lay before her…it didn't just look like her brother. She knew, in her heart…it _was_ Robbie.

"SO…SON…SONEE!" wailed the newborn Electric Hedgehog Pokémon, and began kicking its stumpfeet up and down in discomfort. Cera's confusion instantly turned to rage as she realized the trolls had been lying to her! Robbie wasn't dead! Robbie was still alive, and that meant that _he_ would be the leader of the next Chaotic Combo now, not her! She'd endured all that pain and stress for nothing! She had been so responsible, always working so _hard _to look after her little brother, facing such strenuous challenges as always telling Heather Iglesias what to do and making sure the nanny didn't corrupt Robbie's impressionable mind with her dirty homo ways!

It wasn't fair! This wasn't the way it was supposed to be! She'd been so sure that Kevin had been telling the truth, because Jews _never_ lied, especially not to Roseys. She'd been so excited at the prospect of being just like her mother – beautiful, hardworking, courageous, kind, a force for women's rights, ruling the Chaotic Combo with a handsome Sonichu at her side! And since the Jerkops had told her that her siblings were dead, it was _their_ fault for building up her hopes!

For the first time in the little Rosey's life, jealousy took hold. Now she'd have to share all of her hard-earned presents with Robbie, instead of keeping them all for herself like the trolls had told her she could! If Robbie was here, then she wouldn't get the rewards she deserved anymore!

The last inch of torn skin between her stumpfeet sealed shut, and just like that, the pain dropped to a throbbing ache. Her intestines had retreated into her body cavity, leaving no trace of the horrific birth that had just taken place save for a puddle of orange liquid and the newborn Sonee that had, unbelievably, been formed from the scraps of her brother's flesh sitting in her stomach.

"SONEE!" it bawled, desperately thrashing around with its tumor-like limbs. "SONEEEEEE!"

Cera rose to her feet dazedly and waddled across the desk, her eyes narrowed in bitter jealous fury. This wasn't right. This wasn't fair. She was a responsible Rosey, and she deserved it _all_.

"WAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!" shrieked the struggling baby chu. "SONEE! GOO-GOO!"

Without a word, Cera leaned forward, placed her armstubs against the Sonee's torso, and pushed.

"SONEE! SONEEEEEEEEEE! GOO-GEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" The infant Electric Hedgehog Pokémon tumbled over the edge of the desk and fell, screaming its last pathetic cries of pain and torment as it plummeted to the floor and exploded in a shower of CWC Orange Soda and gobbets of bloody flesh, leaving only a tiny crushed corpse and a pool of sticky orange goo behind. Its squeals ceased in a splattering noise, and the room returned to silence.

Smirking with relief, the Rosey hopped off the desk and paraskirted to the floor, next to the bloody ball of fur that she had just unknowingly birthed from her own stomach. She felt nothing for the newborn Robbie clone – just a sense of smug self-satisfaction and pride. Her body was no longer burning with pain – in fact, she was feeling better than ever! And best of all, there were no footsteps outside anymore, and no voices from the hallway! The trolls, at last, were gone.

Cera sighed in contentment and waddled over to the door. She had it all planned out and under control, like a good responsible Rosey. If she could get to a phone, she could call Grandpa Chris and tell him all about what the mean stupid Jerkops had done to her and how they'd given her so much stress and so many Prickly-Wicklies. The fact that she had never even used a telephone before was completely lost on her…as was the fact that Kevin had closed the bedroom door. And seeing as how Sonichu and Rosechu hadn't had a 'baby knob' installed, there was simply no way that she was getting out of the room anytime in the near future.

The first few tries yielded nothing but soft _thump_s as Cera pushed against the unyielding door with her armstubs. Frustrated by the difficulty of her situation, she sighed and continued shoving harder and harder, until beads of sweat dripped down her fuzzy pink face. Why wasn't it opening for her? Why was everything so _hard?_ She was just a baby, and thus deserved a stress-free life!

_"Pwobwem?"_ a high-pitched electronic voice giggled from the opposite side of the room.

Surprised, Cera looked over her shoulder to see another pink Rosey sitting nonchalantly on her bed and staring at her curiously. The newcomer's mouth was curled into a huge harelip smile and sticking her little tongue out, as if mocking the confused baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon.

"Wat awe you-" she began, then froze in shocked joy as she recognized the large pink object on the bed beside the second Rosey. "YAY! My kawt! You fownd my kawt! Gimme my kawt!"

_"Nuh-uh!" _SUZI made a little raspberry noise and hopped into the seat. _"It's my kawt, stoopid!"_

Cera's eyes bulged in surprise. No other Rosey had ever dared to call the firstborn child of the true and original Sonichu and Rosechu _stupid_. She wasn't stupid! Her mother and father were always telling her how smart she was, which meant that this dumb Rosey was trolling her! Well, she wouldn't stand for such slander! Rosechu had always taught her to stand up for women's rights. The troll Rosey would pay dearly for stealing the go-kart that Cera had rightfully earned!

"NO! IT'S MINE!" she shrieked, and stomped her little foot down hard. "WAAAAAAHHHHH! GIMME MY KAWT BACK YOU STOOPID TWOLL WOSEY! WAAAAAAAAHHHHHH!"

The LIESA unit sighed. _"My nayme is CEWAH Wosey, not Twoll Wosey, you dumb swut!"_

"Wat?" Cera gasped. "No, I'm Cewah Wosey! I'M CEWAH WOSEY YOU WYING TWOLL!"

_"Nuh-uh! You'we not Cewah Wosey! I'M Cewah Wosey, an you awe just a twollin impostowr!"_ SUZI smirked down at the raging Rosey and cheerfully waved an armstub. _"My mommee is da owiginal Wosechu an my daddee is da owiginal Sonichu, an I hawve a wittle sistewr Chwistine an a wittle bwothewr Wobbie! You'we not Cewah Wosey, stooped twoll impostowr!"_

Aggravated and unbelievably infuriated by the accusation, Cera puffed herself up as much as she could, which only served to make her look even fatter instead of taller. "YOU'WE DA TWOLL IMPOSTOWR! I'M DA OWIGINAL CEWAH WOSEY AN MY MOMMEE AN DADDEE-"

_"Bo-wing!"_ SUZI yawned. _"If you'we da owiginal Cewah, den why do I hawve youwr kawt?"_

"DAT'S NOT YOUWR KAWT! DAT'S MINE! MOMMEE AN DADDEE GAVE IT TO ME ON DECEMBEWR TWENNY-FIFTH, TWO TOUSAND AN EIGHT, FOW C-MAS!" Cera let out a massive sigh. "I eawned dat fow being WESPONSIBWE wif Wobbie an Chwistine!"

The combat drone shook her head. _"No, you'we just sum diwty wittle Fatty Wosey! I'm Cewah!"_

"I AM NOT FAT GODBEAWR DANG IT!" screamed Cera, and waddled over to the side of the bed. Hopping up and down on her stumpfeet in absolute tard rage, she tried to grab the blankets and pull herself up with her static cling, but the massive weight of her body quickly put an end to that attempt. The Rosey fell and smacked the floor with a squeal, then toppled onto her back.

_"Yes you awe!"_ sneered SUZI. _"You wook wike you weigh a good thiwty pownds, Fatty Wosey!"_

"I do not weigh thiwty pownds, I weigh a wot wess dan dat, you weak wittle twoll Wosey! MY NAYME IS CEWAH WOSEY, AN I'WL TANK YOU TA CAWL ME DAT!" Spewing fury and indignant hatred from every pore, Cera pushed herself upright and lunged for the side of the bed again. Armstub by armstub, she climbed higher and higher toward the top, doing her best to ignore the rivers of sweat running down her face and the heavy _thu-thump thu-thump_ of her overworked heart pounding in her chest. Not surprisingly, the fat little Rosey only made it about four inches up off the ground before having to take a break.

_"Tee hee!"_ SUZI leaned out over the edge and pointed an armstub at the panting, completely exhausted pink fuzzball. _"Fatty Wosey's too weak! Fatty Wosey's too stoopid! Impostowr!"_

"WAAAAAAHHHHHHH!" bawled Cera. "You…_huff_…you'we da…_huff_…impostowr…"

_"Da weal Cewah Wosey couwd cwimb awl da way up here, wike I did!"_ replied the LIESA unit, goading her unsuspecting rival onward to her doom. _"Fatty Wosey can't do it! Hee hee hee!"_

With renewed vigor brought on by her escalating rage, Cera continued up the side of the bed, mustering up as much of her bioelectricity as possible to keep her dense thirty-pound body from pulling her down and breaking her grip. Just when she thought she couldn't possibly take any more, her armstub finally curled around the top of the bed. Gasping for breath, she flopped down on the soft covers and lay there, soaked in sweat, her underdeveloped muscles crying out for air.

"_Huff…huff…_see?" she panted. "I…_huff…_towd you I was…_huff_…was da weal Cewah Wo-"

_VrrrrrrRRRRRRROOOOOOM! WHAM!_

"WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAAHHHAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH HH!" howled Cera as the go-kart accelerated without warning and slammed into her, knocking her backwards off the bed. With a gleeful cheer, SUZI jumped out of the seat and activated her skirt repulsors, hovering in midair as she watched the little vehicle tumble to the floor. Hurled across the room by momentum, the screaming Rosey slammed into the wall with a fleshy _smack_ that knocked the breath out of her. She dropped headfirst like a stone and hit the floor upside down, alive but utterly paralyzed by the crippling impact.

Giggling with joy, SUZI touched down in front of her and winked. _"HI THERE!"_

"Wuhhhhhh…" gasped Cera, and began weakly trying to push herself down onto her side. All of the blood in her poorly-designed body was rushing straight into her head, making it swell up. "Huuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh…he…hewp…hewp mweeeeeeeeeee…"

_"What?"_ The LIESA unit leaned forward, still smiling. Her twee-speak was gone, though Cera hadn't noticed this. _"I'm sorry, I can't hear you over the sound of your head asploding!"_

"Guguhguhguhgughguhgh!" gurgled the Rosey, frantically kicking the air with her stumpfeet.

_"OOH! I got an idea! I got an idea!"_ squealed SUZI, slapping her armstubs together happily. _"I wanna play dress-up! Do you wanna play dress-up, Fatty Rosey?! I love dress-up! YAY!"_

"Hrrrrhhhhhggghhh!" Cera groaned in hopeless frustration. The weight of her body was pressing down on her bulbous head, and the stupid jerk impostor Rosey was supposed to be helping her!

_"All right, then!"_ In a flicker of LEDs, the little combat drone's eye-screens flipped from green to pure red. Before Cera could even draw breath to scream, SUZI had lunged with a hydraulic armstub and grabbed her by a stumpfoot, effortlessly heaving the baby chu up off the ground. As the Rosey struggled and wailed in terror, the LIESA unit reached for the zipper on her belly and pulled it down, causing her cloth skin to come loose. Hurling Cera to the ground, she tore the flimsy disguise off and flung it away, revealing her nightmarish steel endoskeleton.

"WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!" screeched Cera, frantically trying to crawl away as the now-skinless SUZI floated toward her like some unearthly steel wraith. "NO! NOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO! GO AWAY! GO AWAY! WAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

In a flash, SUZI was upon Cera, snatching her by her stubby tail and tearing her clothes right off her fuzzy body as she writhed and kicked and shrieked in helpless fear. In less than ten seconds, the Rosey's tiny shoes, her blue shirt, and her skirt lay in a pile beneath her. Screaming from the pain in her tail, Cera could only stare, terrified, as SUZI hovered into the air with her fat flailing captive in tow. With a horrid rasping noise, a razor-sharp blade slid out of the PVCC combat drone's other armstub, gleaming with the hellish red light from its owner's eyes.

_"Hee hee hee!"_ giggled SUZI, and pressed the tip of the blade to Cera's belly._ "Dress-up time!"_

"Phew! What a day!" Sonichu remarked out loud, dramatically wiping his forehead as he dashed down Brunchville Lane toward Number 14. "A hospital attack, five bank robberies, twelve fires, and a cat stuck in a tree!" He smiled self-assuredly. "Well, a hero's work is never done, and I am starving! I should head home; Rosey should almost be done making dinner by now."

Sniffing the air, the original Electric Hedgehog Pokémon smiled and slowed to a fast jog to savor the rich, smoky scent in the cool winter air. Whatever his wife was cooking, it smelled absolutely delicious. He couldn't wait to try some of it, and knowing Rosechu, it would most certainly be-

Sonichu stopped in his tracks and stared ahead in disbelief. A cloud of black smoke billowed into the night sky, and a flickering orange glow now bathed the street. Up ahead, a collection of men, women, children, Sonichus, Rosechus, and homebred Sonees and Roseys had gathered on the sidewalks and street. Two police cruisers had parked in front of the yellow house, and the human officers were now trying to keep the crowd behind a cordoned-off **DO NOT CROSS** line.

Fire. His house was on fire.

"ROSEY!" shouted Sonichu in panic, and zoomed toward the commotion as fast as he could. Taken by surprise, the gathered chus and humans hurriedly parted to let him through. "ROSEY! CERA! CHRISTINE! ROBBIE! HOLD ON! I'LL SAVE Y'ALL!"

"Sonichu!" Gerald Grant shouted frantically as he and Louis Perez leapt out of the way. "Wait! Wait, Sonichu, don't go in there! The whole thing's on fi-"

_BOOM!_ Sonichu and the two officers were knocked flat as a loud blast tore through the garage. The scorched bumper of the family sedan exploded through the roof and slammed down onto the driveway, propelled out of the house by the exploding engine. Stunned, the crowd cautiously retreated a few feet backward, in case any more combustible items decided to go up in flames.

"What…what in GodJesus's name _happened?_" Sonichu gasped as Perez and Grant helped him to his feet. "What happened? Where's Rosey? Where are the kids? Please, someone tell me!"

"Sonichu," Louis Perez began apprehensively, "we got a call from your daughter Cera about ten minutes ago. She sounded scared…_really_scared, bro. We don't know what happened in there, but it looks like something crashed right into the kitchen." He pointed to the massive hole that the Battle Bus had punched into the wall of 14 Brunchville Lane. "Could be a PVCC firebomb."

"Oh God! Oh Jesus!" cried Sonichu in terror. "I have to get in there! They need to be saved!"

Grant shot a momentary glance at his partner and sighed. "Sonichu, we can't reach the Mayor's office for some reason. The station's been ringing Big C again and again, but Allison keeps telling us he's on a phone call with his friend…Julia or something. It doesn't sound right, man."

"What?" The Electric Hedgehog Pokémon stared at the officers. "Father's…_busy?_"

Perez nodded. "We're working on it. Don't worry; we'll get through sooner or later."

"Call the Chaotic Combo immediately!" shouted Sonichu determinedly, and hurried toward the house. "I have to save Rosey and the children!" Grabbing the handle, he flung open the door and dashed into the blazing inferno that was 14 Brunchville Lane.

"Sooner or later?" scoffed Grant as soon as the hero of CWCville had vanished. "Nicely done."

"Whatever." Perez shrugged. "If Chandler wants to keep strokin' it, who are we to stop his fun?"

"Damn right, Lou." Grant shook his head in disbelief. "Arceus. After all these years, they finally, really did it. I'm telling you, buddy, it was only a matter of time."

"Hope they got it on video." The officer chuckled. "Hope they suffered, Gerry. All of 'em."

Sonichu tore through the half-destroyed kitchen and the burning living room, his heart pounding in fear as he beheld horror after horror. The TV was gone, and so was the Nintendo Wii. The only thing the Jerkops had left behind were the remains of two VHS tapes – _Mary Poppins_ and_The Adventures of the American Rabbit_ – both smashed to pieces and lying beside a tiny bloodied scrap of yellow fuzz…

"No…" Sonichu gasped as he knelt down and shakily picked up the gruesome object. Robbie's severed tail lay limp in his palm, half an inch of torn skin and fur. Squeezing his eyes shut in disbelief, he closed his hand around the little piece of his son and rose to his feet. Bloodstains were everywhere, trailing back and forth from the kitchen to the living room. There was no sign of the Sonee anywhere, not even a single lost shoe. The lack of any concrete evidence brought a small measure of hope to Sonichu's heart. Maybe the Jerkops had torn off Robbie's tail and he'd evolved into a Sonichu and beaten them up, just like his uncle Punchy!

Filled with fresh resolve, Sonichu dropped the tail and dashed back across the kitchen, paying no heed to the shattered, burning remains of the Sonee carcass on the floor. He had to find Robbie, no matter what! If his spunky little champ had evolved and fought off the Jerkops, then maybe…

Robbie's room was empty. Completely and utterly empty. The intruders had cleared out every last toy and game the Sonee had once owned, even his Nintendo DS and PlayStation 3. All they had left behind was a pile of Robbie's little blue running shoes, along with every single issue of the _Sonichu_ comic book. Engulfed in a curtain of fire, the heap of paper and plastic burned, giving off an acrid stench and clouds of black smoke. There was nothing that Sonichu could do.

"ROBBIE!" he screamed at the top of his lungs, whirling around as he frantically searched for his missing son. "ROBBIE! WHERE ARE YOU, PARTNER?! ROBBIE!"

_Vrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvr rrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrrvrrr!_

Sonichu's ears perked up at the familiar sound of the washing machine coming from the garage. Of course! Rosechu must have put in a load of laundry while dinner was cooking in the oven! Sprinting through the rec room, he wrenched the door open and hurried inside to see the remains of his car blazing away beside his and Rosechu's full-sized go-karts. The two ridiculous vehicles had both been set on fire, and Christine's little purple kart looked like someone had stomped it flat. But the washing machine was running at full force, belching steam into the air as it spun and spun. It must have overheated, due to all the fire coming from the cars.

Curiosity took hold of him, and Sonichu cautiously approached the rumbling appliance. There was something rattling around inside…_several_somethings, actually. It didn't sound right to him. Maybe Rosechu had left some spare change inside her dress again. Intrigued, he reached up and pressed the **OFF** switch, then waited a few seconds for the cycle to stop before…

The water was red.

Sonichu stared through the glass porthole and blinked, hard.

The water remained red.

There was no time to think. Acting on impulse, Sonichu grabbed the handle and wrenched the door open, releasing a boiling gush of red murky liquid that smelled faintly of lemons and high-fructose corn syrup. A cloud of steam billowed into his face and he leapt back with a startled yell. What had happened? What had they been doing to the washing machine?

Reaching into the steaming appliance, Sonichu's fingers closed around a tiny heap of clean white objects. There were more of them, all around the drum of the washing machine – little ribs and vertebrae and a pelvis…and a single fist-sized skull.

A baby Electric Hedgehog Pokémon's skull.

_Oh, GodJesus…_

The smell was everywhere, sickeningly sweet and violently laden with citrus. Sonichu let the tiny collection of bones clatter to the concrete floor of the garage and collapsed backward, his head spinning. No. It couldn't have been Robbie. It couldn't have been Cera or Christine. There was nothing to prove that the Jerkops hadn't just caught a feral Sonee or Rosey and boiled it inside the washing machine. No one could harm his family! No one would _dare_ kill his children!

Struggling to his feet, Sonichu backed out of the garage, leaving the remains of his own daughter scattered around the washing machine and on the floor. Christine Rosey lay in pieces, broken down into nothing more than boiled bones, skin, fat, and meat…but Sonichu would never accept the fact that his beloved shiny baby was dead. Not _yet_, anyway.

Step by step, the panicked Electric Hedgehog Pokémon made his way down the stairs and into the basement, silently hoping that he might find his missing family. Rosechu knew that if there was ever a fire in the house, the basement was the single safest place to hide. And she was a strong, independent woman who knew how to take care of her children! That had to be it! His wife had to have taken Robbie and Cera and Christine into the basement to escape the Jerkops!

"Rosey?" he called out, wishing with all his might for his family to be okay. "Heartsweet?"

There was no answer from the basement. Drawing a deep breath, Sonichu clicked the light on and stepped inside to see…

"OH GOD! GODJESUS! ROSEY! ROSEY! NO!"

Collapsing to his knees beside the naked, mutilated body of his wife, Sonichu flung his arms around the cold corpse and sobbed hysterically. Rosechu's head was completely gone, smashed flat into a mess of bone and brain against the concrete floor. Her fingerless hands lay in pools of blood, and there was no sign of her clothes anywhere. Clumps of purple fur had been scattered all over the basement, along with more blood and pieces of jagged glass from the broken mirror in the corner of the room.

To Sonichu, however, none of this evidence could compare with the body of his murdered wife.

"Rosey…" he wept, his hands trembling as he grasped feebly at her limp body, looking for some single speck of evidence that this was just some trolling attempt, that the Jerkops hadn't really butchered Rosechu and left her naked and dead for him to find, that he was just dreaming and that everything was going to be okay. "Rosey…no…why? WHY?! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

A clattering noise sounded from the kitchen. Startled, Sonichu leapt up from Rosechu's body and dashed back up the stairs. If Cera and Robbie were still alive, he might be in time to rescue them!

"Daddee? DADDEEEEEEEEEE! HEWP MWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"Cera?" he gasped as he pulled open the door and burst into the kitchen, ready to save the day.

The little pink Rosey lay on the floor in a pool of orange blood, screaming and crying, her head and torso a mangled mess of bloody incisions and torn flesh. Sonichu froze, horrified, staring at his suffering daughter in utter shock. How? How could anyone have done such horrible, awful things to such an innocent little baby? Cera was flailing her armstubs and stumpfeet, bawling in immense pain and shrieking frantic cries for help.

"DADDEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!" she wailed again. "DADDEEEEEE! HEWWWWWWP!"

"Don't worry, Cera!" shouted Sonichu as he hurried to her side and gently picked her up in his gloved hands. Cradling his injured daughter, he placed her on the counter, beside the deep fryer. Robbie's ears were still bobbing up and down in the lukewarm oil, and the black streak of ash that had once been the Sonee's genitals lay on the cutting board, near more bloodstains. "Cera, who did this to you and Rosey? Where are Robbie and Christine?"

Cera sniffled and sobbed. "Daddeeeeeeeeee, it huuuuuuwwwwwwwwts! Hewp me! Hewp me!"

"It's okay, Cera! It's okay!" Sonichu shakily petted the Rosey's headspikes, taking care not to disturb the frayed flesh that lined the grievous incisions on her fuzzy little body. "We are going to get you to CWCville General Hospital and make all the Prickly-Wicklies go away! Everything is going to be okay, Cera!" He smiled weakly and looked around the kitchen, trying to hold back the screams of horror building inside of him. "Do you know where Robbie and Christine are?"

"Dey kiwwed dem!" screamed Cera, squeezing her eyes shut in hysterical sorrow. "Da Big Mean Pewson put Chwistine in da washing machine an da pywat deep-fwied Wobbie! Mommee's dead! Dey're awl dead! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!"

Sonichu's legs turned to water, and before he knew it, he had collapsed to the floor. Tears spilled from his fused eye, running down his face and dripping from his black blob of a nose as he wept and sobbed at his daughter's confession. Across the kitchen, a tiny lump of fatty flesh lay blazing on the floor, sizzling and popping as greasy flames continued to consume it. Gasping for breath, Sonichu crawled toward the remains of his son, driven onward by some horrible desire to see for himself what had become of Robbie Sonee.

Only a few blackened, crushed bones and a pile of burnt fat remained within the shattered carcass of the baby chu. With a desperate moan, Sonichu reached out and picked up the little broken Sonee, unable to believe that someone had done this to his only son, the pride and joy of his life. Memories flashed through his mind – memories of teaching Robbie to run, of hanging the stockings by the fireplace with him at Christmas, of jogging beside the little Sonee as Robbie drove his go-kart through CWC-Central Park, of sitting with him at a McDonalds and feeding him French fries one by one…

"R…R…Robbie…" he sobbed, squeezing his eyes shut as he hugged the charred body of his youngest child. "Robbie…no..."

Outside, the crowd was shouting, murmuring in disbelief. Through a blurry haze, Sonichu rose to his feet and stumbled out the front door toward Grant and Perez, who had just been joined by…

"FATHER!" he screamed, sobbing with utter relief. "Oh Father, thank God and Jesus you are here! The Jerkops…they…they…THEY KILLED ROSEY AND THE CHILDREN! FATHER, THEY'RE DEAD! CHRISTINE AND ROBBIE AND ROSEY…ALL DEAD!"

"Now, ah, Sonichu, tha Jerkops can't…dey do not have tha trollin' abilities ta commit such a heinous crime," Christian Weston Chandler said confidently, smiling as he stepped forward to comfort the weeping Electric Hedgehog Pokémon. Sonichu noticed that, oddly enough, he wasn't wearing his medallion. "It was not, it was not tha PVCC jerks dat did dis! NO ONE can get through tha FOOLPROOF SECURITY of 14 Brunchville Lane!" He faced the crowd and smiled knowingly, as if daring them to challenge his statement. "Tha original Rosechu an' her kids…her three children, Cera Rosey, Christine Rosey, an' Robbie Sonee, are NOT DEAD! Dey are MY creations, an' NO ONE is going ta say udderwise because I have tha OFFICIAL COPYRIGHTED FORMS in my office an' on tha CWCipedia Archive website!"

"But…Father…" Sonichu sank to the ground, still hugging Robbie's scorched, crispy remains to his furry chest. "Father…Cera told me…Cera saw everything…"

"Dat is NOT TRUE," Chris insisted. "I will investig-, uh, I will go in an' show all tha people of CWCville, dat dis is just another attempt at SLANDERING tha official copyright an' tryin' ta steal my Sonichu an' Rosechu." He sighed heavily. "I have suffered tha WORST POSSIBLE SUFFERING tonight at tha hands of the evil Julie an' Max, an' these attempts of MURDER AND SLANDER are not making me feel ANY BETTER, THANK Y'ALL VERY MUCH!"

For once in his life, Sonichu didn't know what to say. His heart had been utterly shattered, and even Chris's blustering denial and blame shifting wasn't helping. Squeezing Robbie's shattered corpse, he let out a strangled moan as the Sonee crumbled to ash, leaving only a black smear.

"Now, Sonichu," Chris stated loudly, and smiled as he patted his creation on the shoulder. "Now, uh, dat was not tha original Robbie Sonee. Dat was just a widdle feral bay-bee Sonee dat was planted dere by tha trolls dat kidnapped tha _real_ bay-bee Robbie!" He frowned. "Bay-bees do not get killed, an' not tha original Sonichu children, uh, Cera, Christine, an' Robbie! Tha, um, I will get tha Combo ta start lookin' for tha troll kidnappers ON THE DOUBLE!" Sighing again, he puffed himself up importantly and strode forward into 14 Brunchville Lane. Sonichu hesitated, then hurried after the Mayor to see what had become of his surviving daughter.

Cera was still lying on the counter, moaning in pain. Clumsily fumbling with the bloody Rosey, Chris picked her up and hummed an off-key lullaby, then rocked her back and forth in his flabby arms. He nearly dropped her once or twice, and it was more than obvious that he had never held a baby, human, chu, or otherwise, before in his life. Had Sonichu not been so utterly weakened by grief, he might have suggested that Chris give Cera over to him so he didn't hurt her anymore.

"Father…" he choked hoarsely. "Father, I found…I found Rosey in the basement, and Christine, they…they boiled her to death in the washing machine…"

Chris sighed loudly and placed Cera on the counter again. "I do NOT want all of tha STRESS, Sonichu! If tha original Rosechu is dead, which she is most certainly NOT, then I would advise you ta seek out a new one ta use as a substitute until tha original Rosechu is found an' rescued."

Sonichu couldn't even come up with a suitable reply. Rosechu had meant the world to him, and now Father was insisting that the body in the basement was _not_ hers. Father would _never_ lie to him, but he'd _seen_ her there! He'd touched her! He'd wept over her dead body! They were two sweethearts, bound together forever and ever, and he _knew_ it was her!

"Now, tha, uh, tha next step is ta gather tha Chaotic Combo an' find tha kidnappers," the Mayor continued. "I will call dem together after you get tha widdle Cera bay-bee to tha hospital an' I get my STOLEN PSN ACCOUNT back from dat HORRIBLE MAX AN' JULIE! OOOOHHH!" He clenched his fingers into a claw. "I have been horribly stressed, an', an' trolled…an' I do not appreciate all of dis stress…"

"Father?" Sonichu asked wearily, sinking into a chair next to his weeping, tortured daughter. "Is everything…is everything all right, Father?"

Chris sighed. "Well, Sonichu, my, uh, tha gal-pal Julie that I was talkin' to was not a, was yet another TROLL attempting ta steal my PSN account after I spent SO MUCH HARD WORK getting it back from tha evil Decepti-Clone Rosey! An' Julie, an' her brother Max forced me ta, he made me…" He looked at the floor, embarrassed, once again ignoring Sonichu's pain in favor of his own. "Dey made me shove tha original Sonichu medallion…up my, uh, my a-hole. I had to endure MOUNTAINS of stress ta shove dat original COPYRIGHTED creation up my butt!"

"But…Father…" moaned Sonichu, nearly insane with anxiety. "Father, my family is dead!"

"No, uh, Sonichu, your family is _not_ dead," Chris insisted. "There is tha, well, tha widdle bay-bee Cera Rosey is still alive, an' we can get rid of all tha Prickly Wicklies an' save her…"

"I'm not dead!" Cera insisted from the countertop.

"I wasn't, uh, I was not finished," Chris said, annoyed. "An' den when tha bay-bee Cera is all better an' happy like she should be, den you can take care of her, Sonichu, until she evolves or-"

"I'm getting better!" added the Rosey.

The Mayor let out a long sigh. "Uh, Cera, you are a good Rosey, but I do not like being interru-"

_"YAY! HEEHEEHEEHEE!"_ SUZI shrieked with playful laughter as she ripped her way out of her skin-suit and twirled in the air, splattering the countertop with Orange Soda-laced blood as the crude patchwork costume that had once been Cera Rosey's fuzzy pelt crumpled away in a limp heap. _"IT'S ME! I WAS THE CERA ALL ALONG!"_

Sonichu's jaw dropped. "Ce…Ce…Cer…Cera?"

_"Nope!"_ The skinless LIESA unit crossed her stubs and shook her head. _"Check the bedroom, homo!"_ She raised her hydraulic armstubs to the ceiling._ "TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!"_

_FOOM!_ A blinding blue light exploded from SUZI's skirt repulsors as she rocketed through the ceiling, punching a Rosey-sized hole in the roof and leaving nothing but a few scraps of pink bloody fur behind. Stunned, Sonichu and Chris could only stare in awe as a shower of dust rained down onto the countertop, covering Cera's remains in a sprinkling of white powder.

_"Guuuuuuuhhhhhh…"_ a faint muffled voice cried from far away. _"Guuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhh…"_

Wordlessly, Sonichu rose from the chair and walked, as if in a trance, out of the kitchen. Chris was playing with Cera's skin, brushing off the dust and trying to piece it back together, but the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon paid the Mayor no heed. Step by painful step, he crossed the front hallway to the bedroom, where the piteous cries were originating.

_Please, GodJesus,_ he thought in hopeless desperation, and squeezed his eyes shut. _Please…_

Reaching out with a trembling hand, he grasped the door's handle, turned it, and pulled it open, dreading what he might find on the other side. Taking a deep breath, he opened his eyes.

_"Ggggggguuuuuuuggggggggghhhhhhhh…ggguuuuuuhhhhh…Da aaaaaddddddeeeeeehhhhhh…"_

Suspended by a dripping, glistening, gooey web of gelatinous CWC Orange Soda, the true and honest Cera Rosey floated in a cocoon of eternal agony, her skinless little body slowly spinning around and around as the transparent amoebic mass continued to feed off of her anguish. Her fat and muscles were exposed, trailing little red tendrils from where the gelatinous organism had burst forth from her tortured body. Her eyes were gone, her tongue was little more than a little scrap of flesh covered in holes, and when she screamed, the web of pain screamed with her.

Falling to his knees, Sonichu felt the last remaining vestiges of his Heart Level shatter in his chest. The last of his children, mutilated, tortured, and left to float in a prison of pure suffering.

_"Daaaaaaaddddddeeeeeeeehhhhhhhh…"_ moaned the broken blob of fat and flesh that had once been his beloved daughter._"Daaaaaaddddddeeeeeeeeehhhhh, hhhhhheeeeeewwwwwwppppp…"_

In that moment, all hell broke loose inside Sonichu's mind. Before he knew it, he was screaming, screaming louder than he had ever screamed before, screaming for the wretched creature before him, for the pile of boiled flesh and scattered bones in the garage, for the crumbling, blackened mess that he himself had crushed to ashes…and for the dead, naked, headless, defiled corpse in the basement…the body of his own beloved Rosechu.

Sonichu screamed and screamed again. His cries echoed through the house, growing louder and more crazed with every passing second, until at last his voice gave out and he could scream no more. And still he continued to try, his entire body shaking with delirious grief as a frighteningly strained, hoarse rattling noise issued from his swollen throat. The skinless Rosey was screaming too now, an endless blubbering shriek of unprecedented suffering that filled Sonichu with fresh horror and nearly drove him into insanity then and there.

At last, the world turned black, and Sonichu collapsed to the floor. For the first time in his ten years of existence, he had fainted.

"Well, Sonichu, um, it appears dat tha…" Chris began as he stepped into the hallway and turned toward the bedroom, still clutching the torn pieces of Cera's fuzzy skin. "…dat tha Rosey, uh…" He froze, staring in utter awe at the slimy, pulsating monstrosity that now housed the one and only survivor of Operation Hedgeclipper…the last of Sonichu and Rosechu's children.

_"Gggwwwwaaaaammmmpppaaaaaa…"_ Cera pleaded, her shrill, tortured voice echoing around Chris and Sonichu like some horrible organic PA system. _"Hhhhheeeeeewwwwwwwpppppp…"_

Chris sighed and stepped into the room, right over Sonichu's limp body. "Hmm. Uh, widdle bay-bee Cera Rosey, d'ya remember your Grandpa Chris?"

The gelatinous mass let out a piercing shriek. _"Pppppwwwwweeeeeeeeeaaaaaassssseeeeee!"_

"Don't worry, bay-bee." The Mayor leaned toward the skinless Rosey and stress-sighed once more as Cera continued her loud screeches of torment. The evening had been going _so_ well, and now it was all _ruined_ by these jerks and their horrible troll games. First he had been betrayed by the love of his life and forced to humiliate himself in ways even he had never imagined, and now Sonichu was being lazy and not taking care of his daughter like a responsible parent. Well, Chris would just have to take matters into his own hands if he was going to save the next generation of the Chaotic Combo. And anyway, he could always make Sonichu another wife. It would be fine.

Something glinted on the wooden desk that had once held Sonichu and Rosechu's computer. Clumsily making his way around the web of goo, Chris felt a sticky strand of the mutated CWC Orange Soda brush his arm. Surprisingly, though, it did not burn his skin or even hurt him. It just felt like a piece of Jell-O or Silly Putty, but stickier and filled with a sickeningly citrus flavor.

The tip of a large hunting knife was embedded in the desk, sticking through a single yellow Post-it Note. Curious, Chris reached out and, with no small amount of effort and a massive amount of grunting and sweating, managed to work the blade free of the desk. Grasping the piece of paper in his greasy, sweaty fingers, he held it up to his face and squinted through his glasses. The writing was fairly small, but he could still read it.

_Dear Sonichu,_

_How does it feel to lose everything you ever loved? To have everything you ever cared about taken away from you? To be left with nothing but your own misery? I told you this would happen. I warned you. You didn't listen. And now look what's happened to your family._

_Just remember…you brought this on yourself, Sonichu. This one's all on you. I suggest you try and remember the story of Joseph, and find it in your heart to forgive your failure and move on. Or hell, go out to Spencer's and buy a love doll to tide yourself over for a while. Or don't. Honestly, I don't give a fuck. I killed your daughter, and I'm going to kill you too._

_See you soon,_

_Kevin Shaw_

Sighing heavily, Chris turned the note over. There was writing on the other side.

_P.S. If Christian Weston Chandler is reading this, then I only have one thing to say to you:_

_The CWC Orange Soda is eventually going to kill Cera, but you and only you have the power to save her. You see, the only way to stop the mutagen from peeling her apart is to put her in an enclosed space, full of human feces. You can do it, Chris. Are you brave enough to save her?_

_Sincerely,_

_Kevin Shaw_

Chris let the note fall to the floor in silence. Gritting his teeth, he turned toward Cera and began unzipping his pants. Of _course_ he was brave enough to save the Rosey! He was Christian Weston Chandler, the mayor of CWCville and creator of the Electric Hedgehog Pokémon! The Jerkop troll's slanderous remark was nothing short of an insult! Well, he would show that Kevin Shaw just how brave and powerful he was!

_"Wuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhh!" _screamed Cera as she felt her grandfather's fingers push their way through the painful seal and pry her loose of her gooey, burning prison. _"WUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHH!"_

"D…uh…don't worry, sweetie," mumbled Chris as he leaned forward and positioned the oozing, skinned Rosey over his bottom. "Everyth-, it's all gonna be okay, bay-bee. It's gonna be okay…"

_"WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HH! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! PWWWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASE! WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHH HHHHHHHHHHHH!"_

"Dis, uh, dis'll make everything all better now, widdle Cera," Chris stated with a smile, and shoved her inside.

_SQUICK! SQUISH! SQUICK!_

_"WUUUUUUUUUUGHHUGGUHGUGHGUHGUGUHGUGUGHGUGHUGHGHGUH GHUGHGUGHGUHGUGHGUGHGUGHUGHGUHGUHGUGHGHGGGGGGGHHHH H!"_

Sealed inside her dark, reeking tomb, Cera gurgled and struggled, kicking and screaming and wailing and sobbing in a final, desperate attempt to break free of the suffocating, stinking walls pressing down upon her from every direction. All she knew now, and all she would ever know, was pain, nothing but pure, horrific pain without end.

When, the end finally _did_ come fifteen minutes later, the little Rosey's mind had snapped. Devoid of air, her body simply asphyxiated and died, melting into a gooey slurry of Orange Soda and liquefied flesh. After hours of nightmarish pain, mind-shattering torment, and heartbreaking sorrow, the gruesome aftermath of Operation Hedgeclipper had finally come to an end.

But for Cera Rosey, Christine Rosey, Robbie Sonee, and their mother Rosechu, an eternity of suffering had only just begun.


End file.
